"Living Wage” Covers Only Basic Necessities: Justice?

The subject line is one definition of a Living Wage that is one that allows the earner to pay for at least his or her basic necessities, without public or private assistance. Is this but one definition of economic justice?

The distinction between a living wage and a minimum one is that an earner on the later cannot live without food stamps, housing grants, dental clinic and free clinic care or Medicaid or other aid, even if they work full time. If Congress decides it has to slash social safety net programs in its budget and debt ceiling negotiations, we will see young Mothers standing on street corners begging for food.

These are the very same desperate people who turn to “Payday Lenders” who charge usurious rates of 300 – 400 or more percent interest rates on what becomes a rolling loan that inflates the rate with each rollover. These predators never existed before we deregulated banking, depressed wages to the point that people are desperate and will accept any terms to save their car, pay their rent, or other basic necessity.

In other areas of the country, activists have worked with their local governments to set up a Living Wage Standard compliance system that included:

Public reporting,
Living Wage Business Certification program that helped hundreds of workers get a $4 - $5 per hour raise, that in turn got them off food stamps, and housing grants. It also helped a number of families afford child care that was never a possibility prior to their receiving a living wage. It also helped boost the local economy, and helped the child care provider stay off of public assistance.

Arlington County already has a Living Wage Standard -- so half of the advocates' work is done.

One young mother I talked to recently after GA in North Carolina, told how she was able to go back to college part-time once she began to earn a living wage, which allowed her to pay for child care for her young son on the nights she had classes. She now looks forward to the future that holds the promise of a social worker position following her graduation. She's just getting by, but she can do it on the Living Wage she now receives.

Let’s not stand by and ignore this problem when there is such opportunity to do what is right that is right in our reach. We can do what the activists elsewhere have done that has made a great change in their local communities. We might be able to think up other ways to make a change here in Arlington.

What do you think about this issue? I look forward to hearing from all of you who are concerned about economic justice. I believe the time is right to raise this issue and show how we can all benefit by seeing that a living wage becomes the standard for all hourly wage earners. Contact me at laura.dely@gmail.com.

Tags: Economic Justice, Living Wage

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Comment by Laura Dely on July 12, 2011 at 10:27am: Thank you for your acknowledgement, Moya. It is so
gratifying when a thoughtful response is made to something posted.

Re: your great questions, here’s the skinny:

The Arlington Living Wage applies only to Arlington County employees and its contractors, temporary workers and consultants. The County pays well above the living wage for all of its
EMPLOYEES, but there is opportunity to do something about the cleaning services
personnel who are in their offices every night, and wash their windows, clean
and stock the bathrooms, sweep the hallways, and so on. These people are
working for outside contractors, and are largely female, minority, and
immigrant, and they earn at most minimum wage ($7.25 per hour). (They also work in hundreds of Arlington office buildings, hotels, and luxury condominiums, and retail stores - all of whom could volunteer to raise their workers pay to the lving wage.)

These workers are vulnerable to exploitation in numerous ways, which is another aspect that
could be brought to light in working with the county to address this
contradiction in its policy. I suspect that it isn’t a conscious oversight on
the County’s part, but rather benign thoughtlessness.

That’s the monitoring/reporting aspect of any possible
effort to activate the County’s Living Wage Standard – paying attention to
County compliance with its own policy, with public reporting.

Another possible part of a Living Wage Campaign would be to
establish a Living Wage Business Certification program, where like its “Green
Business” program, would recognize any business that pays a living wage, and
help them promote that they do this. Then the faith community can help by patronizing
those businesses as much as possible, and telling the merchant that their commitment
to a just economy via honoring a living wage pay rate is an important value
that brought you to their store.

These are the types of things that activists have done after
they got their localities to enact a living wage standard.

I think there is real opportunity to address a huge part of
why our economy is stalled, with persistent unemployment at almost 10%, and
further, why young parents have to work multiple jobs to feed their families
and put a roof over their heads. Too many jobs pay too little.

Comment by Moya Marlene Atkinson on July 12, 2011 at 7:59am

Hi, Laura:

Thank you for raising this matter regarding Arlington's Living Wage Standard. Could you please tell us Who qualifies for it, and who doesn't, and what activists elsewhere have done to increase wages, and whether we could emulate them?

I did read that Arlington County's wages are lower than those of Alexandria and Fairfax County.

Seventy-seven percent of Arlington's benchmark jobs, which the county uses to compare itself to other employers, have lower maximum salaries than the same positions in Alexandria and Fairfax County.

Though salaries for each position vary in each community, veteran employees of Alexandria and Fairfax can often earn as much as $7,000 more than someone in Arlington. Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/04/arlington-coun...

I am also concerned at the number of unemployed people in N. Virginia, and whether or not it would be helpful for our congregation to hold a meeting to see how unemployment and under-employment affects us, and if we can find a way to share information about possible job and training opportunities, or volunteer opportunities with stipends attached.

Below is a report from Arlington Now: http://www.arlnow.com/2011/03/16/county-sees-revenue-loss-as-state-.... Starting in FY 2008 and up to the current FY 2011, Arlington has lost progressively more revenue each year:

FY 2008: -$438,214
FY 2009: -$2,603,394
FY 2010: -$7,045,368
FY 2011: -$7,900,610

Although state revenue still makes up about 6 percent of the Arlington’s budget, the overall decline has meant greater reliance on local sources of revenue, including taxes. As of February, state revenue was expected to decline by $600,000 to $62.6 million in the FY 2012 county budget that’s currently under consideration by the board.

Moya Atkinson

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