RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE: DON’T STOP NOW!
By Dick Meister
OK, after ten years – ten years! -- we finally have a new federal minimum
wage. But guess what? It’s not enough, not nearly enough.
If you think it is, picture yourself trying to live on $5.85 an hour, the
new rate that went into effect July 1. Or how about $6.55, next year’s rate.
Or even $7.25, the minimum that Congress generously set for 2009.
Say you work full-time at the minimum, eight hours a day, five days a week.
For the rest of this year you’ll be making $46.80 a day, $234 a week. When
the top rate kicks in two years from now, you’ll be getting a grand total
of $58 for a day’s work, $290 for a week, just a little more than $15,000
for the year’s work. And that’s minus taxes and other payroll deductions.
Can that really be all that the wealthiest country in the world can afford?
Does that meet the legal requirement, spelled out in the Fair Labor
Standards Act, that the minimum be set high enough to guarantee “a standard
of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being”?
A poverty-level existence, or something very near to it, is what it actually
guarantees the 20 million Americans who are paid at or near the minimum.
Which is why leaders of the labor movement and the Democratic Party already
are urging that the rate be raised again as soon as possible. That would be
in 2010. That’s much too long to wait, and the suggested rate of $9.50 an
hour is at least a dollar or two short of what it should be. But
politically, that’s the best we can expect.
It is certain, in any case, that Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of
Massachusetts will soon introduce a bill to put a $9.50 minimum into effect
a year after the $7.25 rate becomes law. The bill may also include a
provision that would automatically raise the minimum to match increases in
the rate of inflation or in some other measure of the cost of living.
The pay of Congress members is adjusted that way, after all. That got them
raises amounting to more than $31,000 during the decade in which they
refused to raise the minimum pay of the working poor. So their minimum wage
is now $168,500 a year, counting this year’s raise of $3,300. All that plus
free health care, pensions and other expensive benefits that are not
available to the minimum wage earners among their constituents.
Sen. Kennedy, key sponsor of the bill that raised the minimum this year and
of previous bills that Congress’ former Republican majority blocked, will
have plenty of Democratic co-sponsors. He’ll also have the support of at
least one of the Democrats’ presidential candidates, former Sen. John
Edwards, for what Kennedy thinks will be a major issue in the 2008 election.
Edwards wants a provision that would automatically raise the minimum yearly
to match any increase in the average pay of U.S. workers generally, which is
projected to rise to more than twice the minimum by 2009.
So who are these minimum wage workers whose plight should absolutely be a
major issue?
No, they’re not middle-class teenagers flipping hamburgers for extra
spending money or other second earners in fairly well-off families who are
cited frequently by opponents of minimum wage increases who should know
better – and probably do.
Actually, more than one-third of those paid the minimum are the main or sole
support of their families. Almost two-thirds are women, including some
750,000 single mothers. More than one-third are African-American, Latino or
Asian. Many are recently arrived immigrants.
Most work in the service or retail fields or in agriculture, many doing such
vital work as caring for elderly nursing home patients or the children of
working mothers, and many doing some of society’s dirtiest and most
thankless tasks. Many can’t find full-time jobs of any kind, even at the
bare minimum. Only a few belong to unions or have other protection aside
from the law.
But what of that other bit of fiction spread by opponents, their flimsy
argument that raising the minimum forces employers to eliminate jobs? Don’t
you believe it.
Just the opposite has happened after each of the 19 previous times the
minimum has been raised since it was initially set at 25 cents an hour in
1938. The job growth has been spurred primarily by the increased spending of
those whose pay has been increased.
What’s more, the raises have benefited employers, since increasing workers’
pay raises their morale and, with it, their productivity, while decreasing
absenteeism and recruiting and training costs.
Taxpayers would benefit, too, since so much of the billions paid out in
public assistance goes to families whose working members do not earn enough
at the current minimum wage to be self-supporting.
Pardon the cliché, but raising the minimum to at least $9.50 is strictly a
no-brainer.
Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister