Bennett - County Workers Deserve A Living Wage/Fletcher - Where Is Labor on Labor Day 2014?
Marty Bennett
North Bay Jobs with Justice list:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/opinion/closetohome/2630003-181/close-to-home-county-workers#page=0
Santa Rosa Press Democrat Closer to Home September 1, 2014
County Workers Deserve a Living Wage
Locally, a coalition of labor, faith, environmental, and community organizations will soon propose a “living wage” ordinance to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.
This campaign is part of a movement for a $15-an-hour living wage that is sweeping the country to raise the wage floor for all workers.
The problem is clear. In California, Franchise Tax Board data show that the average gross 1987-2011 income (adjusted for inflation) increased by 78 percent for the upper 1 percent and 30 percent for the top fifth, while incomes for the bottom 60 percent dropped by a stunning 17 percent.
Hourly wages over the last three decades decreased for the bottom 60 percent of California workers as well, and earnings for the lowest paid workers (10th percentile) declined by more than 7 percent, according to UC Berkeley economists Michael Reich and Sylvia Allegretto.
The Women’s Foundation of California found that by 2012 one-third of California families were the working poor, with at least one member reporting income from work, and with annual incomes of less than $45,397 for a family of four.
Similar economic trends are evident in our county. According to the report “The State of Working Sonoma County 2013,” 12 percent of county households received more than $150,000 in annual income, while the bottom 41 percent earned less than $50,000. By 2010, 28 percent of the county’s families were working poor, with incomes below $44,100 a year.
The declining purchasing power of federal and state minimum-wage levels is one of the main reasons for growing inequality. If adjusted annually for inflation, the California minimum wage of $9.00 an hour would be $11.81. Although the California minimum wage will increase to $10.00 an hour in 2015, that is still far short of a living wage.
According to California Budget Project report “Making Ends Meet,” a living or self-sufficiency wage for two parents, each working full-time to support two children, is $20.51 an hour just to pay for food, housing, health care, transportation and child care, without relying on public assistance programs.
Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour since 2009. Since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, the federal government has raised the minimum wage only three times—consequently the real value of the federal minimum continues to fall. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that annually adjusting the federal minimum wage for productivity increases would raise it to $18.37 an hour.
Productivity increases are not broadly shared: today’s workers’ wages and benefits comprise the lowest share of national income, and profits the highest share, since the 1960s.
Over the last 15 years more than 140 cities and counties have implemented laws that mandate a living wage for local-government employees, private firms contracting with local government, and firms receiving economic development assistance or leasing public property. The living wage movement has helped to educate the public and elected officials about the gap between incomes and living costs, and pressured state legislatures to raise the minimum wage.
The public now overwhelmingly supports minimum wage increases, and 22 states (more than half the total U.S. population) have raised minimum wages above the federal level. In 2014 alone, seven states and the District of Columbia raised their minimum wages, and voters in five other states will consider ballot initiatives for raising their minimum wages in November.
The living wage legislation that will be proposed requires the county, and large county service contractors to pay employees $15 an hour and provide 12 paid sick days plus 10 unpaid personal leave days annually. The law will also cover 3800 in-home support service workers, who now earn $11.65 an hour.
New York University researcher Andrew Elmore surveyed 20 cities after the implementation of living wage laws and documented the modest fiscal impacts: cost increases of less than 1 percent of the overall city budget.
Living Wage proponents do not see the legislation as a cure-all for inequality and working poverty. However, 50 percent of new jobs created in the county from 2008-2018 are expected to pay less than $15 an hour. So this is an important proactive step toward improving wages and job quality.Martin Bennett is co-chair of North Bay Jobs with Justice and instructor emeritus of history at Santa Rosa Junior College.
Bill Fletcher Jr.
With every passing year, Labor Days becomes increasingly surreal. Labor, as a movement, receives decreasing attention and, to the extent to which Labor Day is acknowledged, it tends to be in the context of work alone.
This may sound strange except when you remember that both the original Labor Day--May 1st--as well as the US-constructed Labor Day (the first Monday of September) was not the celebration of work but the celebration of workers and the workers' movement. What we are now seeing are presentations regarding work; sometimes about workers; but rarely about struggle.
The fact of the disappearing media coverage of the labor movement (actually the trade union movement) should come as no surprise in light of the crisis of the trade union movement itself. From a highpoint in 1955 of approximately 35% of the non-agricultural/non-domestic workforce, the union movement is now approximately 11% of the workforce. As the movement weakens, so too does the coverage in the mainstream media, as does attention in our education system where we have students emerging who have never heard of labor unions.
Shifting discussions on Labor Day necessitates shifting the trade union movement in a fundamental way so that it actually emerges as part of a labor movement. It actually necessitates a reformation in the most profound of ways. This includes a reassessment of who is in the movement, for example, the recognition of the rise of domestic worker; taxi drivers; contingent workers, etc., and that these groups are part of the new labor movement. It also necessitates the recognition that when the union movement positions itself as the herald of struggles for justice--rather than struggles for specific sets of workers--it is able to capture the imagination of the public, an example of which was the experience of the United Farm Workers of America (illustrated recently in the commercial film Cesar Chavez).
In most cases, however, unions positioning themselves as the advocates for social and economic justice places them in contradiction with the dominant forces in US (and global) society. The leadership of the movement finds this a challenge to the assumptions upon which the US union movement placed itself during most of the latter half of the 20th century: tri-partism, i.e., unions, business and government working together in some level of partnership. Ironically, even when unions engaged in the most intense of strikes, the ideological orientation or backdrop remained the notion of getting to a position of partnership with capital. Rarely has the union movement challenged the fundamental assumptions of capital when it comes to production and consumption, yet that is precisely what should be on our agenda at this moment.
For the union movement to reemerge as a significant player in a broader labor movement it should now be clear that this will necessitate more than organizing and recruiting workers. The experiments with union renewal in the 1990s and early 2000s should have awaken us to the reality that placing new wine in old bottles is not a recipe for growth and change. At the end of the day, it simply does not work. When the union movement has had a mass following, within the working class and more broadly, it has represented something new and different. There was energy in the movement as well as a sense of a broader purpose. People wanted to be associated with the union movement, irrespective of whether they could or would join an individual union.
Herein lies the challenge as we confront the reality of Labor Day 2014. A holiday that, when celebrated, is not a celebration of struggle and purpose but, instead, treated as simply the final weekend of summer. Rather than a celebration of finality, Labor Day should really be a celebration of vitality. That will only happen when those of us in and around the trade union movement recognize that a re-formed union movement is not only a good idea; it is the only hope to hold off a dystopian future.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a racial justice, labor and global justice writer and activist. He is the author of Solidarity Divided and "They're Bankrupting Us" - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions, both addressing the challenges of the US trade union movement. You can follow him on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com. - See more at: http://portside.org/2014-08-29/labor-day-bill-fletcher-maynard-seider#sthash.tVMbG2Pg.dpuf