King
would tell Congress to value workers
By Holly Sklar
Published by Cox News Service 1/15/06, MSNBC
1/13, Cleveland Plain Dealer, El Nuevo Herald
(Miami), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Albany Times-Union,
Topeka Capital-Journal, Daphne Bulletin (AL),
Mountain Mail (CO), Herald (CT), Lake Worth Herald
(FL), Daily Corinthian (MS), Laconia Daily Sun
(NH), Waco Tribune-Herald (TX), Progressive Populist,
MinutemanMedia, TomPaine.com, Truthout.org, CommonDreams.org,
many more
Copyright © 2006 Holly Sklar
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the brink
of the Great Depression and died fighting for
the right of workers to earn a decent living.
On March 18, 1968, days before his murder, King
told striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn.,
"It is criminal to have people working on
a full-time basis…getting part-time income."
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."
Two years earlier on March 18, 1966, King had
called for Congress to boost the minimum wage.
"We know of no more crucial civil rights
issue facing Congress today than the need to increase
the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage,"
he said. "A living wage should be the right
of all working Americans."
King did not dream that in the year 2006, he would
be remembered with a national holiday, but the
value of the minimum wage would be lower than
it was in the 1950s and '60s. At $5.15 an hour,
today's minimum wage is nearly $4 less than it
was in 1968, when it reached its historic high
of $9.09, adjusted for inflation.
The minimum wage has become a poverty wage instead
of an anti-poverty wage. A full-time worker at
minimum wage makes just $10,712 a year -- less
than $900 a month -- to cover housing, food, health
care, transportation and other expenses.
As Congressional Quarterly observed in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina, "In the Lower Ninth
Ward and other impoverished neighborhoods of New
Orleans, people have long waged battle to make
ends meet... That was a nearly unattainable goal
in a city where many of the jobs were in hotels
and restaurants that paid around the federal minimum
wage of $5.15 an hour."
A low minimum wage is a green light for miserly
employers to pay poverty wages to a growing share
of the workforce -- not just workers at the minimum,
but above it. In its 2005 Hunger and Homelessness
Survey, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that
40 percent of the adults requesting emergency
food assistance were employed, as were 15 percent
of the homeless.
A low minimum wage is a green light for greed.
Between 1968 and 2004, domestic corporate profits
rose 85 percent while the minimum wage fell 41
percent and the average hourly wage fell 4 percent,
adjusted for inflation. In the retail sector,
which employs large numbers of workers at or near
minimum wage, profits skyrocketed 159 percent.
With the federal minimum wage stuck in quicksand,
a growing number of states have raised their state
minimums above $5.15 -- Oregon and Washington
are highest at $7.50 and $7.63, respectively.
Studies by the Fiscal Policy Institute and others
have shown that states with minimum wages above
the federal level have had better employment trends
than the other states, including for retail businesses
and small businesses.
Dan Gardner, commissioner of Oregon's Bureau of
Labor and Industries, says, "Overall most
low-wage workers pump every dollar of their paychecks
directly into the local economy by spending their
money in their neighborhood stores, local pharmacies,
and corner markets. When the minimum wage increases,
local economies benefit from the increased purchasing
power."
In the words of Joel Marks, national director
of the American Small Business Alliance, "Fair
wages are good for business."
Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997,
while denying fair pay for minimum wage workers.
On Jan. 1, congressional pay quietly rose to $165,200
-- up $31,600 since 1997. And unlike minimum wage
workers, members of Congress have good health
benefits, pensions and perks.
Wages are a bedrock moral issue.
It is immoral that workers who put food on our
table go without health care to put food on theirs.
It is immoral that workers who care for children,
the ill and the elderly struggle to care for their
own families.
It is immoral that the minimum wage keeps people
in poverty instead of out of poverty.
King would tell Congress to value workers and
raise the minimum wage. We need a wage ethic to
go with our work ethic.
Holly Sklar is co-author of "A
Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business
and Our Future" and "Raise the Floor:
Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us"
(www.raisethefloor.org).
She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.
Copyright
© 2006 Holly Sklar
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