Where We Stand: Living Wage
I grew up in South Carolina, the youngest daughter of an Episcopal minister. So my first taste of work was chasing after children in the congregation, and I soon became a regular babysitter for a lot of church families in my early teens. They could hire me at around $10 for a night out, and – being the minister's daughter – I was supposed to be well-behaved, right? I never asked for any specific amount – being too shy and uncomfortable at valuing my services, I was happy to get any sort of pocket money. Looking at those green bills, I thought of new books or the latest U2 or R.E.M tape. At those moments, $10 was a lot of money. While I was reminded to drop change into the collection plate at church, and those sad dog faces on the jars for the local pet rescue would always claim my quarters, I mainly spent my cash to please myself.
My first restaurant job was working at Captain D's at age 15. I made a little under $4 an hour, and I learned for the first time how hard it could be to earn money. This wasn't cute little Eleanor and watching cable television. My feet and back hurt, and I got tired of being told to smile when I just wanted to tell some customers how I really felt. I didn't take the work very seriously, and at 16, I thought I'd made a move up and started working at Fuddruckers. While it was for the same pay, I worked in the bakery and there were fewer customers and a live juke box instead of Muzak. These amenities held value to my teenage mindset, though in the end it wasn't really much better, and I ended up getting hives from a poorly placed cleaning chemical that fell on my head from a high shelf. During my last year in high school, the former Youth Director at my church - then the manager at Ryan's Steak house, hired me. At my other two jobs, I'd mostly worked with teenagers like myself and salaried management. At Ryan's I encountered young mothers working to support children, and regular people trying to get by on less than than the cost of the meals they served. After three months of a predictable schedule, I became upset that my hours were cut and talked to my manager about it. When the person who got my hours heard about my dismay, she let me know why she needed the hours. She said, “Do you pay your rent? Do you pay for your food? I do.” I quickly offered her any of my hours, and she shook her head at me.
I'm glad she spoke to me that day, though I didn't really understand the necessity of a decent paying job until college. Then I really needed money to cover rent, gas, books etc. I worked three jobs while going to school full time. I nannied, worked in a gym's day care, and sold cookies to businesses for a commission. I made more money babysitting for private families and my sales job than working for minimum wage at the gym. While it was a struggle balancing work and education, it pales compared to most who do that dance. My stories about working for less than stellar pay do not compare to parents that work three jobs so they can barely raise their children and still not make enough.
This past year I've worked at the Emmaus House Poverty Rights office as part of my contextual education as a seminary student at Candler School of Theology. There I work with the homeless, unemployed, working poor, and generally disenfranchised persons. If I didn't understand that our current system fails in so many ways, then working with distraught people trying to keep on the heat for the winter, helping a recently released female convict with no place to stay obtain an ID (so she can find shelter and get a job), and listening to hundreds of stories of pain and struggle have made an impact.
It is expensive to be poor. If you don't have transportation, the local grocery store is more expensive and has fewer fresh food choices, gas prices are higher in bad neighborhoods and there are often few choices for retail shopping – as is the case near the Emmaus House in downtown Atlanta. The sandwiches we hand out at the Poverty Rights Office can mean a little less hunger, but in the end a sandwich doesn't fill a stomach. On a regular basis, I speak with persons on the brink of making it out of homelessness and transitional housing. Both parents can be working and maybe even a teenager – and then an injury or illness happens. There is no paid leave. There is little money for doctors, and what about getting to the doctor in the first place? Earning less than a living wage makes it almost insurmountable to break out of the cycle of poverty. How can you afford a deposit on an apartment that has fewer sirens waking you at night? What do you tell your son when you can't pay for his school band instrument rental – and he shows so much talent? I've only met some of Georgia's disenfranchised. I can tell you the majority of them are neither lazy, untalented, nor undeserving. It is the American Dream that when you work hard, you get ahead. The American Dream is not working for millions of people, and it is indeed a nightmare situation for many.
The Rev. Dr. James Forbes said, “Poverty is one of the silent killers in the life of our nation. Its cumulative effect is as devastating as earthquakes, floods, forest fires and hurricanes. More people die each year from poverty-related causes than the combined casualties from war, natural disasters and homicide. The daily death toll from poverty-related diseases of body, mind and spirit points to an epidemic in slow motion. Yet the impoverishing process has been at work so long and in so many places that the fatal manifestations advance with the fierceness of a tidal wave. The impact of poverty, while less dramatic, less visible and rarely reported, is nonetheless lethal. It puts the lie to all our notions of equal opportunity, denies us the unimpeded creative potential of families and neighborhoods, and leaves in its wake costly social consequences, which ultimately affect the fabric of the whole community.”
Most people remember the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as the occasion where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I Have a Dream” address. A key demand of the march was “a national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.” Certainly, Dr. King did not dream that the value of the minimum wage would be lower today than it was in 1963.
On March 18, 1968, days before his murder, King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., “It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis . . . getting part-time income.” King said, “We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life.”
In the United States, more than 28 million people (about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64) are minimum wage workers – earning less than the poverty level for their families. Nearly two thirds are women, and almost one third of those women are raising children. A full-time minimum wage job covers, on average, only 34 percent of a family’s basic costs of living. Meanwhile, U.S. corporate profits increased 21 percent in 2007 and worker productivity grew by 111 percent. According to Market Watch, "Profits have been so high because almost all of the benefits from productivity improvements are flowing to the owners of capital rather than to the workers." Raising the minimum wage above poverty level is perhaps the most effective instrument for combating poverty and supporting the human rights of children, women, and people of color in the United States. No other single issue or movement can so directly improve the lives of the working poor in this country.
Just wages make economic sense, and they make ethical sense. On the basis of our faith and our basic commitment to human dignity, The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is working with Let Justice Roll and other groups to improve the equation for working families. Let Justice Roll (LJR) is a nonpartisan coalition of more than 90 faith, community, labor, and business organizations dedicated to the principle that “a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.” LJR has played a key role in making wages a values issue and a moral issue. As a broad-based coalition, LJR reaches across partisan lines, bringing together all groups: religious, secular, faith-based, community-based, labor, business people, liberal, conservative – all who believe that workers deserve a living wage, and all who believe it is immoral that workers who care for children, the ill, and the elderly struggle to care for their own families.
In the 2006 Associated Press Article, “Economist Call For Wage to Be increased,” more than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, called for an increase in the minimum wage.
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament speak specifically about the just treatment of laborers, and the equitable payment of wages. There are just too many passages to quote, so I will mention Deuteronomy, which specifically states, “You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers.” Dr. Paul Sullivan, in speaking of Islam and Economic justice said, “Adel, meaning justice, Mizan, meaning balance or equilibrium, and Ihsan, meaning compassion, are crucial words to understand the search for what economic justice means in an Islamic context. Without justice, balance, and compassion there is not economic justice... In Islam, people can be seen as stewards of God's gifts. Muslims are accountable for the proper stewardship of those gifts and that wealth.” In the Kutadanta Sutta, The Buddha states that in order to raise the social and economic conditions of a country, the farmers and traders should be given the necessary facilities to carry on their farming and business, and that people should be paid adequate wages. Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “When the church is true to its nature, it stands as a moral guardian of the community and of society.” So what calls us into action?
When I look into the face of a tear-streaked mother at the Poverty Rights office and she pleads with me to offer an answer – to offer assistance, how can I not hear that voice – that verbal and distinct call? When we see the plight of families that are trying to make it when gas prices are climbing and the price of food is rising, yet the minimum wage has stayed the same – there is a clear and visible need. In 2007 Congress passed a federal minimum wage increase – the first in 10 years – which will raise that wage to $7.25 by July 2009. The federal minimum wage is currently $5.85/hr. While this is a good first step, there are still many thousands of Georgia workers who can still be paid $5.15/hr – or less – and will not be legally entitled to a raise unless the Georgia General Assembly takes action.
In the introduction to his book titled How Much Do We Deserve?, Unitarian Universalist minister Richard S. Gilbert says he worries that many of us have “lost the capacity for moral outrage.”
In the midst of prosperity, are we vaguely anxious that millions of other, living among us, have not enjoyed the same bounty? Is there such thing as the deserving and the undeserving? What do we owe each other?
. I believe that part of this covenant of community with one another is in pursuit of the greater good, the greater beloved community. Not of some people, not just the crowd at Starbucks, or the person that serves you the latte, but the people that grow and harvest the coffee, the packagers and warehouse workers who bring the product to this city, the drivers of the trucks who deliver the milk for your froth-filled delight, and the road workers that smoothed the potholes so our cars could safely make it to the coffee house at all. The illusion of separateness is a finite declaration in the sand.
When we listen with our hearts and see through eyes of compassionate connection, we understand the sacred interconnectedness between all things. When we look to this wider family – the brothers and sisters we have one in another – we share the greater dream. We uphold one another. When we remember where we stand...There is no weakest link, but one more person connecting the chain. When we bring our gifts, passion, and love to the table, we transcend the obstacles that seem so overwhelming when we are alone.
LET JUSTICE ROLL- Let it roll through our hearts, and have action in our hands and words. Let us stand together.
May it be so.
Excellent insight into the plight of the overlooked, Your writing conveys the reality of the world around us that so many choose to filter through rose colored glasses. Keep up the great work!
/::) Thanks! A small part of the sermon I did at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Athens made it onto a Georgia Living Wage Campaign video.(I am towards the end of the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsila_AY_aw
Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted; only when the last fish is caught: Only then will they realize that you cannot eat money."
-- Cree Indian Prophecy
Of course this problem would take care of itself if our government would control our borders and quit allowing the bottom end of our workforce to be flooded with millions of unskilled workers that depress wages.
I live in a town where we have a tight labor market because we have an energy boom. NOBODY here works for anything close to minimum wage. Highschool kids are starting at fast food restaurants at $10 hour and if they stick with the job they are quickly making $12. Everybody else is earning even more. Help wanted signs are everywhere. Everybody is earning a living wage and the people who are willing to work hard and get either cold and dirty or hot and dirty in the gas fields are earning fantastic wages. All they need is a warm body, a 100 IQ, and a drug free urine test.
The key to making life better for the bottom end of our workforce is not to try to legislate higher wages but rather to control the supply of cheap labor. When employers are forced to compete for a LIMITED supply of workers they will pay them better and treat them better with benefits in order to retain their services. My town is proof that this is exactly what happens in a tight labor market. In a tight labor market the minimum wage becomes moot because EVERYBODY IS EARNING MORE.
The problem with the legislative approach (as opposed to the market approach) to raising wages is that in an environment where there is an abundant supply of cheap illegal workers, it is simply unenforceable. Employers will simply fire the expensive citizen workers and replace them with cheap, easily exploitable illegal workers. This has happened all over the country.
Once you get rid of the illegal workers then there is no need for the legislative approach because the tight labor market will solve the problem, The tight labor markets after WWII were what gave rise to the vast American middleclass which had barely existed previous to that. We can have those good times again if we just control the influx of cheap unskilled illegal immigrant labor.
This is an old argument of letting market forces rather than legislative action make changes. I would argue that there are times for both. I wish market forces would simply create prosperity for all those that want to work hard, but I have seen with my own eyes that this is nor the case. As for your town, You are speaking from your experience. In Georgia, there are not opportunities like that for every warm body or and definitely not at that pay rate. Martin Luther King Jr. marched for persons that were "cheap, unskilled labor". The market is not the arbitrator of ethical action.
In the United States, more than 28 million people (about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64) are minimum wage workers – earning less than the poverty level for their families. These 28 million people represent a significant portion of our population. You can't simply attribute poverty to illegal immigration. There are larger fish to fry, like inequities in education, economic opportunities, and housing that we can discuss on a larger scale.
In the United States, more than 28 million people (about a quarter of the workforce between the ages of 18 and 64) are minimum wage workers – earning less than the poverty level for their families. These 28 million people represent a significant portion of our population. You can't simply attribute poverty to illegal immigration. There are larger fish to fry, like inequities in education, economic opportunities, and housing that we can discuss on a larger scale.
I think I am arguing that the penny is copper and you are saying no, the penny is round. We both agree that the people at the bottom end of our workforce need some help.
A worst case scenario for both of us would be an unregulated workforce. That would be the pure libertarian position. If our labor market was truly unregulated then our borders would be wide open and there would be an even more massive influx of immigrants than we would have already gotten and our wages for unskilled workers would be in equilibrium with the rest of the world at about $1 per day. No minimum wage law would change this situation because the shear numbers of desparate people would make it unenforceable. The blackmarket for cheap labor would prevail (close to what is happening now.)
I am in agreement with you that there should be legislation, and equally importantly enforcement, to protect the bottom end of our workforce. Our disagreement is about the nature of that legislation and enforcement. You want to short circuit the market and just mandate a wage. I want to limit the supply of labor and then let the market work.
You mention 28 million people earning minimum wage. There are somewhere between 12 and 20 million illegal aliens in America and probably 60% of them are in the workforce. For ease of discussion lets call it 10 million low wage, illegal workers.
Don't you image that removing 10 million low wage workers from the labor pool would have a huge impact on the labor supply and therefore both the available job opportunities and the wages offered to legal workers? Suddenly there would be 10 million help wanted signs and employers would be comping with each other to hire and retain the remaining workers. They would be forced to raise wages and offer better benefits. Circumstances would suddenly be much better for those 28 million minimum wage people.
In recent years, the Southern USA including Georgia has been one of the top destinations for the influx of illegal workers. Don't you suppose that if less illegal workers were available that employers in Georgia would be forced to offer higher wages to the remaining citizens? There has been a major housing boom in Georgia for most of the last decade. Was it illegal immigrants or citizens who built those houses and were they paid the traditional high wages that construction workers used to earn?
And these 12 to 20 million illegals also effect the other issues you mentioned too. Illegals don't share neighborhoods with the rich and the middleclass. They live in the same neighborhoods as the poor and compete for housing. Don't you suppose rents or the cost of buying a home would fall if 10 to 20 million illegal aliens were kicked out of poor neighborhoods? Landlords would be forced to lower rents to fill vacant housing.
And the illegals also attend the same schools as poor people. These schools are already underfunded and because the illegals are non-English speakers, they soak up a disproportionate share of the educational resources. The children of poor citizens are thus deprived of a decent education and are condemned to another generation of poverty.
I don't actually think that the government will ever get around to removing 12 to 20 million illegals. I doubt that is realistic although I am going to keep pushing for it until I get what I really want which is adequate enforcement of our borders and our employment laws to ensure that the hemorraging stops and that the problem quits growing worse. Then as the economy grows, with the unskilled workforce not expanding by the constant influx of illegal workers, then a shortage of unskilled workers will develop and fix the problem and jobs like construction and meat cutting and others which used to be middleclass jobs but have lately become poverty jobs will regain their historical status as the gateway to the middleclass and a better life.
According to the Center for American Progress 37 million people live in poverty. It isn't just 28 million people. The idea is to allow a vehicle out of the poverty cycle.
The Living Wage is enforceable while illegal immigration, as you stated, is very hard to control. I will agree that services to illegals are a strain on government and taypayer budgets.Think about this, if businesses have to pay an adequate wage, the market for cheap illegal labor is abolished.
I do agree that a return to previous economic times would be favorable. According to Oregon State University the real dollars from the minimum wage in the 1950's was higher than it has been since the early 80's.
New calculations of IRS data by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty show that over the past three decades income has skyrocketed by 240 percent for the wealthiest 1 percent, while for the bottom 90 percent it increased only 10 percent.
In fact, just between 2005 and 2006, average income adjusted for inflation of the top 1 percent grew by $73,000 (or 7 percent), while the average income of the bottom 90 percent grew by just $20 (or 0.1 percent). (In 2006, the top 1 percent were those with incomes above $375,000, and the bottom 90 percent were those with incomes below $105,000.)
So, what does it tell us that incomes are growing faster for those at the top? Clearly the rules that govern income growth in our economy are rigged in favor of the already rich.
But it doesn't have to be this way. The same data show that in the three decades after World War II, things were reversed: incomes for the top 1 percent grew only 25 percent, while for the bottom 90 percent they grew 92 percent.
Among the rules that changed between then and now are union-busting, trade liberalization, deregulation, and tilted tax policies. Time to change them back?
Think about this, if businesses have to pay an adequate wage, the market for cheap illegal labor is abolished.
Exactly backwards!
The reason illegal aliens come here is because of the wage disparity between the USA and their country of origin. Our current minimum wage (which you think is too low) looks GREAT to them. They can earn more in an hour at our current minimum wage then they earn in a day in their native country. If you raise our minimum wage that disparity will be even greater and the incentive for them to come will be even larger. So much for your solution addressing the SUPPLY side of the problem.
And of course if you raise the minimum wage you will hugely drive up the DEMAND side of the problem because employers obviously don't want to pay higher wages. Instead they will quit hiring Americans and hire illegal aliens off the books at lower wages instead. They will not only lower their payroll costs but they will save themselves a bunch of employment taxes too. This is already happening with roughly 40% of the illegal workforce is working off the books.
Living wages are no more enforceable then any other employment law. If we can't stop employers from hiring illegals then we can't stop employers from hiring illegals at illegal wages. And if employers can get away with hiring illegals at illegal wages then it does not matter how high you raise the Living Wage because it won't do the poor citizens any good because nobody will give them a job. Employers will hire illegals instead.
The Living Wage is a bandaid that fails to address the underlying economic problem that causes low wages. The underlying economic problem is that there are too many unskilled workers for the number of unskilled jobs. It is the same tragedy that bedevils most of the third world. Too many people chasing too few jobs. The result are low wages and massive exploitation. Abundant labor translates to low wages and workers being treated as disposable chattel. The way to get high wages is have scarce labor. Scarce labor leads to highly paid workers who are valued and treated well so that they can be re-tained. That is exactly the result which has occurred in my town which I described in my post above and it was the fundamental situation that gave rise to the American middleclass in the 1950's.
You can't legislate economic problems out of existence. That approach is as silly as writing a law that says "gasoline shall cost $1.00 per gallon" without actually addressing the fundamental supply and demand issues that cause gasoline to be expensive. The result of such a bandaid law will be massive shortages in the short term (as people buy up the insufficient supply) and in the long term (as companies refuse to invest in bringing new supplies to market). If the price of gas is too high, no legislation is going to fix that problem unless it addresses the fundamental supply and demand issues.
Likewise, trying to legislate higher wages without addressing the fundamental supply and demand issues that are causing wages to be low is silly and will result in perverse consequences. As stated above it will just lead to more illegal immigration and lower wages paid off the books and higher unemployment for citizens. The end result will be greater poverty. If your goal is for the poor to be richer then the solution is to quit importing ever more poor people who compete with them and drive down their wages.
There are some contradictions in your statements:
“I am in agreement with you that there should be legislation, and equally importantly enforcement, to protect the bottom end of our workforce.”
“You can't legislate economic problems out of existence.”
You also state:
“I don't actually think that the government will ever get around to removing 12 to 20 million illegals. I doubt that is realistic although I am going to keep pushing for it until I get what I really want which is adequate enforcement of our borders and our employment laws to ensure that the hemorraging stops and that the problem quits growing worse.”
It has been shown that border control is extremely expensive to implement and practically impossible to effectively enforce. As long as there are jobs waiting on the U.S. side, and comparitevely worse conditions on the other side, people will repeatadly risk life and limb to come across. This is not just a statement from out of the air – it is shown again and again on the border, day after day.
Exactly forward!
We can't fully control a border, however, I say we can pursue effective enforcement for employers. Take away the current demand for illegal immigrant labor at the source – the businesses – and the supply will be lessened. Since you keep bringing the topic back to illegal immigration, I say that we can help both Living Wage and curb illegal immigration at the same time, using a group that responds better to law enforcement: businesses.
Statistics show that enforcement against businesses hiring illegal immigrants in Arizona is currently being effective. Enforcing a Living Wage puts those who would not follow this law into the realm of hiring off the books, which makes it easier to prosecute them for hiring illegally. For the employers who do not hire off the books, I'm sure they would much rather hire someone who is local, and knows the language and culture, than an illegal immigrant. The current illegal immigrants risk all because they are sure, with good reason, that a job awaits them at the other end. Take that surety away, and they will be much less likely to risk coming here.
I say the penny is both round, and copper. Prosperity will increase when we have a less dependent, impovershed population. There will be more pennies and prosperity when there are less people below the poverty line. There will be more pennies and prosperity when people can meet their basic needs with a living wage.
We can't fully control a border, however, I say we can pursue effective enforcement for employers. Take away the current demand for illegal immigrant labor at the source – the businesses – and the supply will be lessened. Since you keep bringing the topic back to illegal immigration, I say that we can help both Living Wage and curb illegal immigration at the same time, using a group that responds better to law enforcement: businesses.
We are in complete agreement on the above statement.
I think once this enforcement happens that there will be very little need for living wage legislation because like they have in my town, wages will rise as result of the tight labor supply. But I will be much more willing to be supportive of programs that end poverty so long as we are not self-defeating these programs by importing an endless supply of new poverty.
As far as controlling our borders, we have never really tried. Compared to many things, the fence is dirt cheap. It would be only be a few billions to fence the whole border and our government wastes that kind of money many times over. We only have 20,000 border patrol agents which is a paltry force. By comparison, we have just under 40,000 cops in New York City. We don't know how much it would cost to control our borders because we have never made more than a token effort at even trying.
But I certainly agree that the best thing to do is attack the demand side of the problem and that means making greedy, exploitive employers do the perp walk.