Communist
26th July 2009, 00:50
from an email sent by Portside
=============================>
On the Minimum, Wage - Two Takes
(1)
Minimum Wage Stuck in the 1950S
By Holly Sklar
ZNet
July 25, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22120
Are you better off than you were 40 years ago? Not if
you're a minimum wage worker.
It would take $9.92 today to match the buying power of
the minimum wage at its peak in 1968, the year Martin
Luther King died fighting for living wages for
sanitation workers.
In today's dollars, the 1968 hourly minimum wage adds
up to $20,634 a year working full time. The new federal
minimum wage of $7.25 comes to just $15,080. That's $
5,554 in lost wages.
"It is criminal to have people working on a full-time
basis ... getting part-time income," King told workers
in Memphis, Tenn., days before his murder. King said,
"We are tired of working our hands off and laboring
every day and not even making a wage adequate with
daily basic necessities of life."
Imagine what King would say today.
The minimum wage is stuck in the 1950s. With the raise,
the minimum wage is higher than 1950's inflation-
adjusted $6.71, but lower than the 1956 minimum wage of
$7.93 in today's dollars.
The long-term fall in worker buying power is one reason
we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression.
The federal minimum wage was not enacted during good
times, but during the extraordinarily hard times of the
Great Depression. When the minimum wage became law in
1938, one out of five workers was unemployed and job
creation was crucial.
President Franklin Roosevelt called the minimum wage
"an essential part of economic recovery." Roosevelt
said, millions of workers "receive pay so low that they
have little buying power. Aside from the undoubted fact
that they thereby suffer great human hardship, they are
unable to buy adequate food and shelter, to maintain
health or to buy their share of manufactured goods."
Roosevelt said, "The increase of national purchasing
power an underlying necessity of the day." And so
it is today.
Camille Moran, owner of a Louisiana Christmas tree farm
and paralegal service, says, "A minimum wage increase
could be the most important factor in powering our
economy out of the recession."
Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of our
economy. The minimum wage sets the wage floor.
We can't build a strong economy on poverty wages.
A growing share of workers make too little to buy
necessities -- much less afford a middle-class standard
of living.
A growing share of business revenue has gone to
executive pay and profits.
In 1968, the richest 1 percent of Americans had 11
percent of national income. By 2006, they had 23
percent -- the highest share since 1928, right before
the Great Depression.
We can't build a strong, sustainable economy on a
1950s' wage floor, 1920s' income gaps and ballooning
Wall Street bailouts.
U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce CEO Margot Dorfman
says, "Now, more than ever, it's imperative employees
are paid a fair minimum wage. It is an unsustainable
and dangerous downward spiral to push American workers
into poverty and expect taxpayers to pick up the bill
for the consequences."
Dorfman is among 1,000 national business leaders and
small business owners supporting the minimum wage
increase in a statement at
www.businessforafairminimumwage.org.
"Anyone who thinks the minimum wage shouldn't be raised
should try living on it," says Phillip Rubin, CEO of
Computer Software for Professionals in Oakland, Calif.
Michael Shuman, public policy director at the fast-
growing Business Alliance for Local Living Economies,
says, "Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 is an overdue
step in providing a decent, fair livelihood to American
workers and creating a truly `living economy.'"
If the minimum wage had stayed above the nearly $10
value it had in 1968, it would have put upward pressure
-- rather than downward pressure -- on the average
worker wage.
The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, which I
advise, is calling for a minimum wage of $10 in 2010.
It's time to break the cycle of too little, too late
raises.
"A fair minimum wage protects the middle class and
gives entry level workers some economic breathing
room," says Lew Prince, co-owner of Vintage Vinyl in
St. Louis, Mo. "Rebuilding our economy starts with
showing hard-working Americans that their work will be
rewarded."
_______________
Holly Sklar is author of "Raising the Minimum Wage in
Hard Times" (www.letjusticeroll.org) and "Raise the
Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us." She
can be reached at hsklar(AT)aol.com. (http://mail01.mail.com/scripts/mail/compose.mail?compose=1&.ob=9de75c9fd709a4a08964b8ea7f05f2b953049ee5&composeto=hsklar%40aol.com)
(2)
Editorial
Where the Jobs Are
New York Times
July 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1
An estimated 2.8 million employees will get a raise on Friday, as the
federal minimum wage rises from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. Another 1.6
million whose hourly pay hovers around $7.25 are also expected to get
a boost as employers adjust their pay scales to the new minimum. The
raise is badly needed. It is also wholly inadequate.
With the latest increase, the minimum wage is still no higher now,
after inflation, than it was in the early 1980s, and it is 17 percent
lower than its peak in 1968. That means that no matter how hard they
work, many low-wage workers keep falling behind. The latest increase
will slow the decline in living standards, but it doesn't reverse the
overall downward pull.
Even that understates the broader dimensions of the problem.
The minimum wage also sets a floor by which other wages are set.
Keeping it low keeps wages lower than they would be otherwise,
especially for jobs that are just above the minimum-wage level.
That's a big problem for American workers because low-wage fields are
the ones that are adding the most jobs.
According to the Labor Department, 5 of the 10 occupations expected
to add the most jobs through 2016 are "very low paying," up to a
maximum of about $22,000 a year. They include retail sales jobs and
home health aides. Another 3 of the 10 are "low paying," from roughly
$22,000 to $31,000, including customer-service representatives,
general office clerks and nurses' aides.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama proposed lifting the
minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011 and, from there, adjusting it
annually for inflation. He should press that goal. At $9.50 an hour,
the minimum wage would be restored to its historical highs - about 50
percent of the average wage. And it would restore the minimum wage to
its broader function - helping boost pay across the economy.
President Obama talks a lot about a bright future with high-paying
green technology jobs. It is imperative to plan and work for that
future. But a concerted effort must also be made to improve the
opportunities for workers in the types of low-wage jobs that are
going to be most plentiful for years to come.
That means working with unions, professional associations, community
colleges and employers to build so-called career ladders so workers
can attain the skills they need to advance, say, from a very-low-paid
home care aide, to a low-paid nurse's aide, to a higher-paid licensed
vocational nurse. Partnerships between unions and employers in
hospitals, casinos and factories have pioneered such skill-building
efforts, combining on-the-job training with classroom instruction.
The Labor Department must also ensure that low-paid workers are not
exploited by vigorously enforcing workplace safety rules and fair pay
practices.
Low-paid jobs are a fact of working life in America. Unlike so many
of the nation's higher-paying jobs, they are not going away. One of
the big challenges of our time is to ensure that for some workers,
they are a stepping stone to better jobs and that for all workers,
they are safe and fairly compensated.
_____________________________________________
===============================================
[I]Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
=============================>
On the Minimum, Wage - Two Takes
(1)
Minimum Wage Stuck in the 1950S
By Holly Sklar
ZNet
July 25, 2009
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22120
Are you better off than you were 40 years ago? Not if
you're a minimum wage worker.
It would take $9.92 today to match the buying power of
the minimum wage at its peak in 1968, the year Martin
Luther King died fighting for living wages for
sanitation workers.
In today's dollars, the 1968 hourly minimum wage adds
up to $20,634 a year working full time. The new federal
minimum wage of $7.25 comes to just $15,080. That's $
5,554 in lost wages.
"It is criminal to have people working on a full-time
basis ... getting part-time income," King told workers
in Memphis, Tenn., days before his murder. King said,
"We are tired of working our hands off and laboring
every day and not even making a wage adequate with
daily basic necessities of life."
Imagine what King would say today.
The minimum wage is stuck in the 1950s. With the raise,
the minimum wage is higher than 1950's inflation-
adjusted $6.71, but lower than the 1956 minimum wage of
$7.93 in today's dollars.
The long-term fall in worker buying power is one reason
we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression.
The federal minimum wage was not enacted during good
times, but during the extraordinarily hard times of the
Great Depression. When the minimum wage became law in
1938, one out of five workers was unemployed and job
creation was crucial.
President Franklin Roosevelt called the minimum wage
"an essential part of economic recovery." Roosevelt
said, millions of workers "receive pay so low that they
have little buying power. Aside from the undoubted fact
that they thereby suffer great human hardship, they are
unable to buy adequate food and shelter, to maintain
health or to buy their share of manufactured goods."
Roosevelt said, "The increase of national purchasing
power an underlying necessity of the day." And so
it is today.
Camille Moran, owner of a Louisiana Christmas tree farm
and paralegal service, says, "A minimum wage increase
could be the most important factor in powering our
economy out of the recession."
Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of our
economy. The minimum wage sets the wage floor.
We can't build a strong economy on poverty wages.
A growing share of workers make too little to buy
necessities -- much less afford a middle-class standard
of living.
A growing share of business revenue has gone to
executive pay and profits.
In 1968, the richest 1 percent of Americans had 11
percent of national income. By 2006, they had 23
percent -- the highest share since 1928, right before
the Great Depression.
We can't build a strong, sustainable economy on a
1950s' wage floor, 1920s' income gaps and ballooning
Wall Street bailouts.
U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce CEO Margot Dorfman
says, "Now, more than ever, it's imperative employees
are paid a fair minimum wage. It is an unsustainable
and dangerous downward spiral to push American workers
into poverty and expect taxpayers to pick up the bill
for the consequences."
Dorfman is among 1,000 national business leaders and
small business owners supporting the minimum wage
increase in a statement at
www.businessforafairminimumwage.org.
"Anyone who thinks the minimum wage shouldn't be raised
should try living on it," says Phillip Rubin, CEO of
Computer Software for Professionals in Oakland, Calif.
Michael Shuman, public policy director at the fast-
growing Business Alliance for Local Living Economies,
says, "Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 is an overdue
step in providing a decent, fair livelihood to American
workers and creating a truly `living economy.'"
If the minimum wage had stayed above the nearly $10
value it had in 1968, it would have put upward pressure
-- rather than downward pressure -- on the average
worker wage.
The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, which I
advise, is calling for a minimum wage of $10 in 2010.
It's time to break the cycle of too little, too late
raises.
"A fair minimum wage protects the middle class and
gives entry level workers some economic breathing
room," says Lew Prince, co-owner of Vintage Vinyl in
St. Louis, Mo. "Rebuilding our economy starts with
showing hard-working Americans that their work will be
rewarded."
_______________
Holly Sklar is author of "Raising the Minimum Wage in
Hard Times" (www.letjusticeroll.org) and "Raise the
Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us." She
can be reached at hsklar(AT)aol.com. (http://mail01.mail.com/scripts/mail/compose.mail?compose=1&.ob=9de75c9fd709a4a08964b8ea7f05f2b953049ee5&composeto=hsklar%40aol.com)
(2)
Editorial
Where the Jobs Are
New York Times
July 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1
An estimated 2.8 million employees will get a raise on Friday, as the
federal minimum wage rises from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. Another 1.6
million whose hourly pay hovers around $7.25 are also expected to get
a boost as employers adjust their pay scales to the new minimum. The
raise is badly needed. It is also wholly inadequate.
With the latest increase, the minimum wage is still no higher now,
after inflation, than it was in the early 1980s, and it is 17 percent
lower than its peak in 1968. That means that no matter how hard they
work, many low-wage workers keep falling behind. The latest increase
will slow the decline in living standards, but it doesn't reverse the
overall downward pull.
Even that understates the broader dimensions of the problem.
The minimum wage also sets a floor by which other wages are set.
Keeping it low keeps wages lower than they would be otherwise,
especially for jobs that are just above the minimum-wage level.
That's a big problem for American workers because low-wage fields are
the ones that are adding the most jobs.
According to the Labor Department, 5 of the 10 occupations expected
to add the most jobs through 2016 are "very low paying," up to a
maximum of about $22,000 a year. They include retail sales jobs and
home health aides. Another 3 of the 10 are "low paying," from roughly
$22,000 to $31,000, including customer-service representatives,
general office clerks and nurses' aides.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama proposed lifting the
minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011 and, from there, adjusting it
annually for inflation. He should press that goal. At $9.50 an hour,
the minimum wage would be restored to its historical highs - about 50
percent of the average wage. And it would restore the minimum wage to
its broader function - helping boost pay across the economy.
President Obama talks a lot about a bright future with high-paying
green technology jobs. It is imperative to plan and work for that
future. But a concerted effort must also be made to improve the
opportunities for workers in the types of low-wage jobs that are
going to be most plentiful for years to come.
That means working with unions, professional associations, community
colleges and employers to build so-called career ladders so workers
can attain the skills they need to advance, say, from a very-low-paid
home care aide, to a low-paid nurse's aide, to a higher-paid licensed
vocational nurse. Partnerships between unions and employers in
hospitals, casinos and factories have pioneered such skill-building
efforts, combining on-the-job training with classroom instruction.
The Labor Department must also ensure that low-paid workers are not
exploited by vigorously enforcing workplace safety rules and fair pay
practices.
Low-paid jobs are a fact of working life in America. Unlike so many
of the nation's higher-paying jobs, they are not going away. One of
the big challenges of our time is to ensure that for some workers,
they are a stepping stone to better jobs and that for all workers,
they are safe and fairly compensated.
_____________________________________________
===============================================
[I]Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.