Living Wage YES!

Concurrent living wage campaigns in Minneapolis and St. Paul propose tying wage floors to federal food support levels. Both efforts, under the banner “Living Wage YES!,” recommend that businesses receiving city contracts must pay their employees 110 percent of the federal poverty level ($10.23 per hour) if they provide health insurance, 130 percent ($12.09 per hour) if they don’t.

Campaign organizers believe that city contracts should promote healthy wages and that businesses receiving city contracts should provide wages that keep their workers above government assistance eligibility levels. Why, they reason, should government subsidize jobs and job creation that will require a second subsidy going to individual workers?

Food Support, one of the more generous government assistance programs, is allowable for households with income at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty guideline and assets at or below $2,000, so organizers tied their wage floor to this income level.

These living wage campaigns, as with many others across the nation, raise important debates about how government subsidies–to individuals and businesses–should be targeted, and what exactly is a living wage.

Some decision-makers feel that any needed subsidization of full-time workers–be it economic assistance, food support, or a housing subsidy–is nothing less than a subsidy to business to pay a substandard wage.

Others feel that macro-market forces will never perfectly keep in check all living expenses at all times: Sometimes median housing prices will go beyond the average worker’s reach. Take today’s situation, for example. The same may apply to other basic expenses at times. Government’s role, then, is to guarantee a well-targeted safety net.

Another camp feels that any subsidization–to individuals or businesses–simply gets in the way of the market eventually addressing the matter.

But the Living Wage YES! Campaigns, while raising these issues, also allow for people of differing viewpoints to get behind them.

As an August 3, 2005, Pioneer Press editorial noted, “it is government’s prerogative to set conditions for contracts it enters into and for the assistance–as grants and tax breaks–that it gives to the private sector.”

The cities, in these proposals, are just like any other market player and have the right to set policies for their business dealings.

The Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless is part of the broad coalition of community, faith, and labor groups asking the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils to pass the living wage ordinances. Other supporters include:

• Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council
• ISAIAH
• Minnesota Acorn
• Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Office of Social Justice
• Jewish Community Action
• Progressive Minnesota
• SEIU MN State Council
• AFSCME Council 5
• MFT Local 59
• Teamsters DRIVE
• UNITE HERE Local 17
• Twin Cities Coalition of Labor Union Women
• Confederation of Somali Communities of Minnesota
• Twin Cities Religion and Labor Network
• JOBS NOW Coalition
• Minnesota Association of Professional Employees
• Minneapolis Democratic Farmer-Labor Party
• Green Party of Minnesota, 5th Congressional District
• MPIRG

The notion of a living wage supports the Coalition’s Income Security policy statement, which says:

The Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless recognizes that homelessness cannot be separated from the issue of poverty. The Coalition believes that government must take an active role in ensuring that everyone has enough income to afford housing and meet basic needs such as food and health care. This includes maintaining a livable minimum wage as well as providing a social safety net that is both sufficient to meet basic needs for anyone who, for any reason, cannot obtain or retain employment, and that provides meaningful avenues to build toward self-sufficiency through education, training, and employment support.

For more information, visit Living Wage Campaigns or contact Katie Walloch at Progressive MN.