Democrats to woo voters on (minimum) wage issue

The Living Wage Movement: Building Power in our Workplaces and Neighborhoods

In 1994, an effective alliance between labor (led by AFSCME) and religious leaders (BUILD) in Baltimore launched a successful campaign for a local law requiring city service contractors to pay a living wage. Since then, strong community, labor, and religious coalitions have fought for and won similar ordinances in cities such as St. Louis, Boston, Los Angeles, Tucson, San Jose, Portland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Oakland -- bringing the national living wage total to 122 ordinances. Today, more than 75 living wage campaigns are underway in cities, counties, states, and college campuses across the country. Taken collectively, these impressive instances of local grassroots organizing is now rightfully dubbed the national living wage movement, which syndicated columnist Robert Kuttner has described as "the most interesting (and underreported) grassroots enterprise to emerge since the civil rights movement … signaling a resurgence of local activism around pocketbook issues."

In short, living wage campaigns seek to pass local ordinances requiring private businesses that benefit from public money to pay their workers a living wage. Commonly, the ordinances cover employers who hold large city or county service contracts or receive substantial financial assistance from the city in the form of grants, loans, bond financing, tax abatements, or other economic development subsidies.

The concept behind any living wage campaign is simple: Our limited public dollars should not be subsidizing poverty-wage work. When subsidized employers are allowed to pay their workers less than a living wage, tax payers end up footing a double bill: the initial subsidy and then the food stamps, emergency medical, housing and other social services low wage workers may require to support themselves and their families even minimally. Public dollars should be leveraged for the public good -- reserved for those private sector employers who demonstrate a commitment to providing decent, family-supporting jobs in our local communities.

Many campaigns have defined the living wage as equivalent to the poverty line for a family of four, (currently $9.06 an hour), though ordinances that have passed range from $6.25 to $13.00 an hour, with some newer campaigns pushing for even higher wages.

Increasingly, living wage coalitions are proposing other community standards in addition to a wage requirement, such as health benefits, vacation days, community hiring goals, public disclosure, community advisory boards, environmental standards, and language that supports union organizing.

http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/index.php?id=2071