Thursday, December 3, 1998
People deserve higher minimum wage
MONEY: Our standard of living shouldn’t be set by businesses
trying to max out profit margins
The holidays are upon us, and with them is the reminder to
remember the less fortunate. In place of the customary feel-good or
guilt-inducing sermons about the poor, however, I’d like to draw
your attention to a practical matter.
There’s an effort underway in America that would address poverty
– not through individual acts of charity, but through the deep
structure of economic policy. It’s the "living wage" movement.
What is the living wage?
At present, it is illegal for U.S. employers to pay their
employees less than $5.15 an hour, although individual states may
set the bar higher if they choose.
Unfortunately, that means a person can work full-time (40 hours
a week), 50 weeks a year and earn as little as $10,300 a year
before taxes. That is $550 below the poverty threshold for a family
of two, $3,350 below it for a family of three and $6,150 below it
for a family of four people.
Proponents of a "living wage" recognize that the current minimum
wage cannot sustain a family and seek to bring it more into accord
with the real cost of living.
Most suggestions hover around $7.25, the amount that the L.A.
City Council approved for municipal contracts in March 1997 but has
been slow to enforce.
If this reform sounds too radical to you, consider that although
the minimum wage has crept upward over the years, its real value
has declined.
Economist Robert Pollin calculates that $7.37 was actually the
minimum wage 30 years ago if measured in 1998 dollars – and that,
if it had kept up with economic growth since then, it would be
$11.07.
Wouldn’t a living wage be bad for the economy?
Right-wingers say that the minimum wage (let alone a living
wage) will force employers to eliminate jobs and/or raise
prices.
That argument assumes business has no choice but to keep profits
and executive salaries climbing, regardless of productivity and
social justice.
Theoretically, we could preserve jobs and control prices by
eliminating the minimum wage. We could also create more jobs if we
cut wages or, better yet, eliminated wages altogether and brought
back slavery. But the American economy at least pretends to hold on
to a scrap of morality.
Wages are regulated because business, left to its own devices,
tends to exploit its workers. It already tests the limits by
outsourcing its labor to regions like Indonesia, which are more
hospitable to the idea of keeping adults and children in unpaid or
miserably underpaid conditions. At home, employers will often
refuse to share the wealth with their employees in a time of
prosperity, while letting them take the weight when managerial
ineptitude makes profits fall – a practice sometimes called
"privatizing gain, socializing loss."
As for the runaway inflation that wage increases supposedly
cause, it simply hasn’t happened.
Consumers have proven capable of absorbing moderate inflation,
which is a small price to pay for significantly boosting the
quality of life, relieving the financial desperation that fuels
crime and reducing dependency on government services.
Can’t low-wage earners just get better jobs?
First of all, there’s more to moving up in the world than good,
old-fashioned American gumption. It requires free time,
flexibility, skill, education – resources that tend to increase in
direct proportion to the amount of money you’re already making.
Second, the creed of self-improvement doesn’t change the fact that
employers can get away with paying unlivable wages. If all the
minimum-wage workers in America got promotions tomorrow, their jobs
would still have to be filled. Screwing the people who do fill them
perpetuates the mentality that the poor are solely to blame for
their poverty and that nothing but hard work separates the haves
from the have-nots.
Pious instructions to the laboring poor to better themselves are
also insults to labor, implying that it is somehow beneath fair
compensation. Our society should concentrate on restoring dignity
to all varieties of work, not leave some of them behind and
encourage the workers themselves to follow.
What can I do?
You can contact the L.A. Living Wage Coalition at (213) 486-9880
for more information on organizing at the city, state and federal
level. You can also help spread the word among people you know.
"Living wage" isn’t yet part of the national vocabulary, and it
needs to be.
Despite overwhelming popular support for such ordinances, every
effort to tack pennies onto the national minimum becomes a
legislative fistfight; one bill that would have raised it to $6.15
by the year 2000 was killed in Congress this September. Big
business won’t be able to keep government in its pockets for much
longer if, in every election, candidates must heed the public cry
for a humane and livable wage.
Mailbag:
In an interesting letter, an undergraduate and former Marine
responded as follows to the column in which I advocated drastic
military cutbacks: "Having been in the military before and during
the reduction of forces and the budget cuts, I can attest to the
number of times we were not allowed to train because of the lack of
money. Having family in the military, I do not find it pleasing
that he suggests they should be ill-trained for combat."
I have nothing but the highest respect for labor of all kinds,
including military labor. I don’t think skimping on manpower is a
necessary consequence of budget cuts. It is, however, the solution
that industries tend to favor, as opposed to sacrificing the toys
like Super Hornet fighters that maintain lucrative corporate
alliances. Modest cutbacks or even a slower growth rate in the
Pentagon weapons arsenal could keep the troops as well-trained as
ever, probably with dollars to spare.
Adam Komisaruk
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