TL;DR: if I don't take a less desirable position, multiple coworkers will no longer be able to work here
Unfortunately long background context: I work for a large after-school program, a fairly large one that, while I don't know the exact numbers, has hundreds of K-12 students enrolled at various locations across my town. For my position, directly leading a group of kids, there are two types of staff: normal hourly employees, paid for by the employer, and Americorp positions, paid for with Americorp grant money. My employer obviously prefers the Americorp positions, as they don't have to pay anything for those.
I am one of the two hourly employees at my location — everyone else is Americorp. Apparently multiple coworkers have their Americorp contracts up in the middle of the semester, which is inconvenient for obvious reasons. They all wanted to finish out the school year, but cannot commit to new Americorp contracts. My supervisor tried to convince HQ to allow them to finish the year as hourly group leaders, as it'd barely be a couple of months, but they refused because they don't want to have to pay them out of their own money.
Our supervisor is trying hard to not make us feel guilty, but if the other hourly and me don't sign on to Americorp contracts, which involve significantly more work for less pay, those employees will not be allowed to continue working at our location (or likely our job in any location) and the kids they've been working with all year (multiple years in some cases) will have to have a new leader.
I'm just so angry that this program, which claims to care about kids so much, particularly the at-risk kids who will be most harmed by this decision, is putting this responsibility on OUR shoulders. None of us, Americorp or hourly, get paid anything close to a living wage. We are the absolute lowest ranking job in the hierarchy, but if I don't make a self-sacrificing decision and do something I actively avoided doing when I got hired on, I have to live with the guilt.
I don't really need advice, I'm going to do it so they can keep working here, but I'm just angry. Multiple jobs, I've been the lowest ranking and paying job in those places — literal poverty wages — and yet we always end up with bigger responsibilities than the people who are making multiple times more than us, including people getting paid 6 figures. I'm just so fucking tired of it and figured people here could relate.