Raising the minimum wage in Greensboro: Background facts and figures

• Raising the minimum wage in Greensboro provides an earnings boost to a substantial number of low-wage workers. Over 20, 000 minimum wage earners in Greensboro would get an immediate raise if the minimum wage were increased. According to the City of Greensboro Website a substantial portion of Greensboro is designated a poverty zone. It is referred to as North Carolina Development Zone Number 027. This zone contains a population of 98,614 as of the 2000 Census. The percentage of those below the poverty level is 20.02 percent, which represents 19,740 persons living in poverty.

• According to an article in the Greensboro News & Record, October 23, 2006, the city median household income adjusted for inflation dropped almost 21% between the 2000 -2005 censuses, American Community Survey. In 2005, the figure dropped from $46,459 in the 2000 Census to $36,733.00 in 2005. This is a drop of $10,000. This drop means that the typical Greensboro
  household income buy about 4/5 of what it did five (5) years ago, and many households earns much less than it did.

• Increasing the minimum wage does not result in fewer jobs for entry level workers. Usually there is no effect on the total number of jobs available. Studies at the Fiscal Policy Institute and the Economic Policy Institute found no measurable impact on job loss. The Federal minimum wage was last raised in September 1997. In a report by the Clinton Administrations National economic Council, “Since the 1996-97 increase in the minimum wage, the American economy and labor markets have continued to perform very strongly. In retail trade, which has a large concentration of minimum wage workers, there were 1.4 million new jobs.”
  

• Minimum wage workers are concentrated in service and retail jobs. 75% of the workers who would be affected by a minimum wage jobs:
  
  Occupations that include many minimum wage jobs:
  
  Food prep (not just waiters and waitresses, also counter workers, cooks)
  Sales/retail (service station attendants, convenience and grocery store clerks)
  Personal care and services (childcare, nursing and group home workers, etc.)
  Production workers (laundry, factory workers, dry cleaning, bakeries)
  Office/Administrative support
  Maintenance workers (building cleaning, groundskeepers, etc)
  Health care support workers, home health aides, visiting nurses, etc.)
  
  

• Minimum wage workers are not just college students and teens who need spending money. They are largely adult women, disproportionately people of color, and many of them rely on their earnings to support a family.
  

• A new poll indicates most Americans want a higher minimum wage. A poll by the non-partisan Pew Center indicates 82% of Americans favor a higher minimum wage, saying it was a priority.
  

• Increasing the minimum wage makes good economic sense. The proposed increase would inject more disposable income per year into our local economy. Workers would likely spend their increased earnings on food consumer goods. Increasing the earnings of low-wage workers will reduce the need for state and federally public assistance programs which are funded with taxpayer dollars. The increase in the Greensboro Minimum Wage is about fairness, opportunity, and the value that work provides.

New opportunities to sign the minimum wage petition

Committee members will be on hand at the following upcoming events collecting signatures on the minimum wage petition:

• Triad Youth Jazz Society First Annual Fundraiser Festival - April 27 (6:30-11:30pm) - 28 (10am - 7pm), Coffeehouse on Summit (623 Summit Ave., across the street from the Women's Resource Center)
• Beautiful Black Woman Festival - May 5 (1-6pm), American Legion Post 267, 3214 McConnell Road, Greensboro
• Youth Poetry Festival - May 12 (1-5pm), Festival Park (off Davie)

What does federal law say about a city/municipality establishing a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum?

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 establishes a minimum wage in the United States which includes:

Relation to Other Laws
Sec. 18. (a) No provision of this Act or any order thereunder shall excuse noncompliance with any Federal or State law or municipal ordinance establishing a minimum wage higher than the minimum wage established under this Act and provision of this Act relating to the employment of child labor shall justify noncompliance with any Federal or State law or municipal ordinance establishing a higher standard than the standard established under this act.

The federal law that established the minimum wage in the United States specifically allows states and municipalities to establish a higher minimum wage.

The City of Santa Fe, NM has established a city-wide minimum wage of $9.50/hr. and the action was challenged in court. The Court of Appeals of the State of New Mexico approved the city-wide higher minimum wage on November 29, 2005 in the case of New Mexicans for Free Enterprise, The Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, et al v. The City of Santa Fe.

Today higher city minimum wage ordinances have been established in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Washington DC.

Next Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee Meeting (Revised time!)

When: (UPDATED TIME) 4pm, Saturday, April 21, 2007

Where: Faith Community Church (Beloved Community Center), 417 Arlington St., Greensboro, NC 27406

If you have completed petitions please bring them with you. We'll have a notary public at the meeting to notarize them.

Please spread the word about the campaign and bring someone with you.

Questions? Please call Marilyn at 336 230-0001 or email here.

(No media at the meeting, please. If any media reps are interested in covering the minimum wage campaign, please contact Marilyn at 336-230-0001 or email here.)

Brennan Center Report: Citywide Minimum Wage Laws

May 2006 Brennan Center report on citywide minimum wage laws, by Paul K. Sonn:

In Santa Fe, the minimum wage workers who received raises were overwhelmingly adults (89%), predominantly people of color (67.3%), and typically living in families where the low-wage worker contributed a significant share of the family’s income (51.6% on average).

[...]

Moving beyond this body of research on state and federal minimum wages, the first wave of analysis of citywide minimum wage laws has consisted of surveys and projections of their impact prepared before they took effect. These analyses have generally found that the impact on local businesses would be fairly modest:

• An analysis of the Santa Fe law found that the median employer would experience a cost increase equal to just 1% of its sales revenue, and that the impact in the most heavily affected industry — restaurants — would be 3.4% of sales. Figures presented in court by four restaurants challenging the Santa Fe law indicated that the actual cost impact for three of the four would be even less.


• A survey of local businesses commissioned by San Francisco similarly found that 82% of employers would see less than a 1% increase in their operating costs under the new law. Only 5% of all businesses would see cost increases of 5% or more. A survey in New Orleans found even smaller impacts — averaging 0.9% of operating costs for employers overall, and 2.2% for restaurants — from a proposed citywide minimum wage.


• The studies in Santa Fe, San Francisco and New Orleans also concluded that few employers would be likely to relocate outside of the cities to avoid the higher minimum wage levels. This was because the businesses most affected were ones that needed to stay close to their customer base in the city — for example, restaurants, hotels and retailers.

[...]

Increases in the minimum wage can also function as an economic stimulus for low-income neighborhoods. While higher-income households usually save a substantial portion of a pay increase, low-income households generally spend their higher wages. And they do so in their local communities on necessities such as food, rent and transportation.

[...]

The power of cities to enact citywide minimum wage laws varies from state to state. In a few states such as New Mexico, Maryland and California, the legislature or the courts have already made clear that cities have the power to enact minimum wages. A few others — Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, South Carolina, Oregon and now Wisconsin — have passed laws that actually forbid citywide minimum wage laws. But in most states, the issue has not yet been tested. Legal analysis indicates that, in most states, cities may regulate minimum wages under their local “home rule” authority to enact legislation to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of their communities.

Support for local minimum wage efforts

My friend Catherine Admay pointed me to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, which, among other things, provides support and resources to local efforts to raise the minimum wage. Check out their website for a wealth of information I'll be wading through in the next few days.

Sign the petition at the Tate St. Festival Saturday

Committee member Fahiym Hanna (below) will be on hand at the Tate Street Festival Saturday to get minimum wage petitions signed. Look for him there.

"Too Simple", cont.

An interesting conversation is still going on at Doug Clark's site about his column on the minimum wage increase. (We had our own conversation here about it, too.) Billy and GRAF are making some excellent arguments that have been made here and will be echoed repeatedly from now through November, I anticipate.

Full version of today's N&R column

Today, the N&R published a partial version of a column (unposted, as far as I can tell) written by our committee's co-chairs, Jim Boyett and Marilyn Baird. Here is the full version:

We read with interest Andrew Brod’s article against raising the minimum wage to $ 9.36 per hour in Greensboro and the News & Record editorial wherein they promote other ways to deal with poverty then raising the minimum wage. The members of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee believe that there is more to the story that should be considered by the citizens of our city before they vote next November. The business and political leadership of Greensboro, the State and the Nation have failed the working people who built this country. For 30 years 75% of working people have been suffering from stagnant or declining wages. This trend is now accelerating. On October 23, 2006 the News & Record published an article that stated. “Adjusted for inflation median family income in Greensboro dropped from $46,459.00 in 2000 to $36,733.00 in 2005.” Most families in Greensboro have suffered a drastic loss of purchasing power. In our opinion this happened because of deliberate political choices made by our leaders. Over this period of wage decline for working people our Business and Political leadership has been pursuing a course of action that they call “free trade.” A more accurate description would be “trade policy to protect monopoly power and special interest.”

Every trade deal in the last twenty years has been designed to extend copyright protection, patent law protection and financial protection to banks, drug companies, software companies and other powerful special interests in foreign markets. In exchange for these special protections in foreign countries, we open up our domestic markets to manufactured goods that can be made cheaply in foreign countries. What’s going on has nothing to do with free markets or free trade. It has everything to do with protecting powerful special interests at the expense of working people. A copyright is a special protection from the market granted by government. It is in fact a government-imposed monopoly. Bill Gates is incredibly rich because the government will imprison anyone who makes copies of Windows without Mr. Gates’ permission. What cost practically nothing to produce and distribute over the Internet is worth thirty billion dollars per year to Microsoft. What NAFTA, CAFTA and the other foreign trade deals really do is allow Microsoft and Mr. Gates to arrest people in India, China, Mexico and Africa if they use Windows without his permission. Because of government action, not the market, Mr. Gates will be worth another thirty to fifty billion dollars. The only things Mr. Gates and friends have to give up to get this protection are other people’s jobs. At last count the manufacturing job loss is three million nationwide and continuing. Our own politicians contributed a few hundred thousand textile and furniture jobs in North Carolina.

The privileged and the elites of our society want us to believe that we lost our jobs because of some impersonal market or lack of education. They are counting on us being too stupid to understand that this problem is a political problem and it was made in America. We on the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee believe in democracy. Democratic action will allow us to protect ourselves and our families from economic slavery. This fight is only beginning at the local level.

Slate magazine reports that 35,000 mostly business lobbies are spending two billion dollars per year every year to influence congress. This money is being spent so that the “Free Market” can be manipulated for their clients' benefit. Real democracy, not a market controlled by special interest, is the answer to the workingman’s problem.

When another generation was faced with economic collapse, we elected a leader who pledged to confront the Economic Royalists and give working people a chance. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to made a living----a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”


When adjusted for inflation the minimum wage would have to be approximately $9.36 per hr today to equal the purchasing power it had in 1968. We think we are being more then reasonable to expect that business can afford to pay its employees at least as much as they paid them 39 years ago. Working people can’t afford to buy our own politicians, however, millions of us can began to vote for things that will make a difference. It’s a start.

Are minimum wage laws enforced in NC?

Special thanks to an anonymous commenter who says s/he is a former employee of the NC Department of Labor, Wage & Hour and who made the comment below about our state's enforcement of wage laws.

(As a side note, I read the department's website and found the following paragraph:

The Wage and Hour Act includes employee protection for minimum wage and overtime payments, payment of promised wages not normally covered by law, youth employment, and recordkeeping. The minimum wage, overtime and youth employment provisions generally parallel the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and apply to all businesses whose annual dollar volume is under $500,000. The minimum wage rate is currently $6.15 an hour in North Carolina.

Does anyone know what it means when it says that the minimum wage applies only to businesses whose annual dollar volume is under $500,000?)

From the commenter:

Just came across your blog. I wish you the best with this one.

As a former employee of the NC Dept of Labor, Wage & Hour in Raleigh, I can tell you that even if the minimum wage is increased, employers who break the law by not paying it, nothing will happen to them.

It is my belief based on what I saw on a daily basis for over 4 years, the idea in Raleigh is to make one phone call and send one letter to the employer and if there is no response, then the claim gets tossed. Wages are recovered, yes. Its just that everybody who has been screwed out of a paycheck isn't lucky. I dont think that it should be a matter of luck. I think they either enforce the laws or get rid of them. If it is so problematic for Wage & Hour to recover wages for working people, then either hire more workers, or fix the law so employers fear the wrath of the Dept of Labor. Right now employers know they have nothing to fear.

I was amazed at the number of employers in this state who do not even pay regular wages to their employees. Much less minimum wage.

This is a very serious problem in our state that nobody seems to want to address. The DOL claims they handle THOUSANDS of complaints a year. That is alot of people getting screwed out of their hard earned money.

I can only guess that at the MOST, over the past 5 years, only 3 cases have made it to the AG's office for actual litigation. It might be interesting to find out how many cases the Labor Section with the AG's office has actually taken to court for minimum wage violations or non-payment of wages.

As it stands now, the laws on the books in NC to enforce wage payment are useless words on paper. This is sad because there are people right now in prisons for less crimes. Screwing someone out of their hard earned money should be a felony, in my opinion.

Good luck with the crusade. I will keep checking back.

Vote - The People, Yes

The People, Yes is a budding organization with the following short term goals:

To reach out to our neighbors on the other side of the digital divide and provide the necessary training and logistics for enabling a new online community of voices via blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc. We plan on directly engaging with the homeless community and folk living at or below the poverty line, but will work with any Greensboro resident who would like to publish their point of view.

Sean Coon is (one of?) the leads of this org and is trying to get the word out about a funding opportunity that you can help with. From his blog post on the topic today:

Today is day two of the voting for Netsquared’s Technology Innovation Fund. If you haven’t yet stopped by to vote for The People, Yes, please do so. If we place, we’ll receive solid funding and development resources desperately needed to get us off the ground.

And here is a picture Lisa Scheer took that Sean used on his blog. I have liked it so much both times I've seen it that I took the liberty of posting it here, too. Hope she won't mind.

The sabbath and minimum wage

I have many reasons for being involved in this campaign to raise the minimum wage in Greensboro.

One is that it is an extension of my work with the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recommended, among other things, a living wage for all Greensboro city employees. (Although this initiative is not exactly what was recommended by the GTRC, it is related to some of the underlying causes of the events of Nov. 3, 1979, that the Commission identified in its report.)

But another, deeper reason for being involved in this campaign is related to my own religious background and convictions and grows out of the fourth commandment as described in Exodus 20:8-10 (New Revised Standard Version):

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

The way most of us read this commandment rests on the idea that we are called to refrain from working on the seventh day (whatever day we understand that to be), but I think the rest of the passage is actually much more interesting.

Remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy involves not only refraining from work on the seventh day, but also laboring for the six days that precede it. Furthermore, the commandment is not just for me to refrain from working, but also for me to make sure that those around me (regardless of gender, social class, nationality or even species) refrain from working on that day.

In his book entitled The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel says, “Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath.” In other words, the Sabbath is not a tool for recuperating from the six days of work and/or preparing for the next six. Rather, the six days of work, Heschel says, are for the sake of the Sabbath, which he says is the “climax of living.”

Observing the Sabbath is the “climax of living” because refraining from working one day a week reminds us that we are more than our job title, our incomes or other labels attached to us based on what we *do*. For one day a week, it dissolves the hierarchies that make some of us feel more valuable/deserving than others and others of us feel less so. And, finally, it reminds all of us that we are not the center of the universe, meaning that the world keeps going even when we stop working.

But what does it mean for the weekdays to be “for the sake of the Sabbath”? As I understand the commandment and Heschel’s take on it, my six days of work should be dedicated to making it possible for myself and others to observe the Sabbath. In other words, part of my Sabbath observance must be allowing others to observe the Sabbath, which, in turn, means that they must be similarly making it possible for those around them to observe the Sabbath. (I could go on and on here, but I think you get it.)

The work of many in Greensboro allows the rest of us to have the choice of observing the Sabbath, refraining for at least one day from much of the work we would otherwise be burdened with – garbage collection, childcare, nursing assistance, food preparation and serving, to name a few of those tasks that are generally rewarded with wages significantly less than $9.36/hour.

So for me, living out this commandment that is echoed in nearly all of the world’s religious traditions means, at the very least, working to make sure that these workers who make it possible for me to observe the Sabbath, thus observing part of the Sabbath themselves, do not have to work full time and still live in poverty.* To do otherwise would be to deny them and myself the “climax of living.”

(*For many who work full time for less than a living wage, it is impossible to refrain from working for a day due either to working multiple jobs or not having sufficient control over one's work schedule. Thanks, Tony, for requesting that clarification.)

Quick Thought

I was just thinking about Andrew Brod's closing paragraph in his N&R column (unposted) about the minimum wage hike:

It always amuses me when reporters go out and ask people on the street if they think the minimum wage should be increased. The people on the street generally say yes because everyone agrees that it'd be nice to make more money. Wouldn't we all say yes if that's all there were to it? But reporters would shed more light on the issue if they would ask the question with a caveat: "Do you think the minimum wage should be increased if it meant that you might lose your job?"

My first thought when I read this paragraph was that Brod must have not spent much time on the streets in Greensboro asking people if they support a minimum wage hike. Plenty of people - to be honest, white men with one or two white women thrown in the mix - have told me that they oppose a minimum wage hike. One even responded that he thought the minimum wage was "high enough"!

But aside from those responses, I'd like to propose that reporters might also shed more light on "the issue" if they would ask people if they would support a minimum wage hike if they were/are themselves earning minimum wage ($6.15/hour).

Petition drive continues at living wage rally

Greensboro minimum wage petitioners will be on hand at a "tax-day" rally calling for a living wage. Details are below:

What: Tax Day Rally for a Living Wage, with banner and flyers
Why: When employers do not pay a living wage, workers must turn to government benefits to survive, so tax-payers subsidize low-wage businesses.
When: April 17, 4:30-6:00 pm
Where: Main Post Office on Murrow Blvd at Friendly Avenue.
Who: Greensboro Housing Coalition (Beth 691-9521)
More information: www.universallivingwage.org

Whitfield responds to Wilburn

From committee member Ed Whitfield:

Wilburn's op-ed counterpoint "The cost of city minimum wage" (News & Record on April 6, 2007) is an open appeal to anti-immigrant prejudice and a somewhat irrational argument against the minimum wage increase. Using the codewords "socialize our market economy" to discredit this community initiative which makes use of existing democratic processes and state laws to raise wages in our community, he goes on to make an argument that could be used equally well against any improvement in the social fabric here. The idea that we don't want to have higher wages because it might attract undesirable people from outside Greensboro is as silly as suggesting that improving the roads or the library system or the schools might similarly attract folks from other communities without those amenities. Would he suggest that we develop a low quality of life just so we won't be any more of a magnet?

It still seems to me that we, the members of this community need to affirm our view of the dignity of work and working people by democratically reversing the declining trend in wages over the last forty years due to inflation. While labor productivity has increased, real wages have not. Working people should be adequately compensated for their labor. This is a good step in that direction.

Tenecia Harper supports a minimum wage hike

Ms. Harper writes a letter to the editor in support of the minimum wage hike in Greensboro

The United States still lives on the Rugged Individualism model, where if you work hard you will be rewarded and the government needs to play no part.

But how is this model still advocated when 40 percent of those listed as being in poverty are working poor?

"If working poor want assembly to listen: Just quit being poor"

A funeral was held yesterday for the bill to raise the minimum wage in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ray McAllister of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote his column on the ceremony and the bill. Here are a few excerpts I appreciated:

The trouble with poor people is that they have no clout.

They don't make big political donations. They don't pay lobbyists.

They certainly don't invite the good ol' boys over to the country club.

With little influence, all they can do is hope for justice and fairness.

Good luck with that.

[...]

A horse-drawn wagon carried a flag-bedecked casket yesterday. Behind it came a procession of people from around the state.

All 51 of them. Fifty-one people, total, from around the state.

You can find that many in a Starbucks.

That's another problem with working poor people. Apparently, they can't take time off work for symbolic marches.

[...]

[Janice "Jay"] Johnson refuted standard arguments that increasing the minimum wage will hurt small employers, some lower-paying positions will disappear, teens will have fewer job opportunities and so forth.

"I grew up here," Johnson said. "This is a Southern way of thinking. It says those people in control will give you what they think you need so they can stay in control."

[...]

"It seems the term, the oxymoron 'working poor' is acceptable in our state, even encouraged," Johnson said.

More information on the effort to raise the minimum wage in VA here.

New Hampshire House overwhelmingly approves minimum wage hike

The New Hampshire House voted yesterday to raise the state's minimum wage to $7.50 over the course of 18 months. Foster's Online reports the following:

"Who does earn the minimum wage?" [Rep. Marjorie Smith] asked fellow lawmakers. "It's not kids who are earning gas money or money to go to the prom. Rather, it is working parents, workers over 65 and females." . . .A recent study by researcher Ross Gittell of UNH for the New Hampshire Women's Policy Institute showed many of the state's 30,000 or more workers who earn less than $7.25 an hour are parents or older workers. Sixty percent of full-time, low-wage employees are women.

Too simple?

Although our committee's co-chairs, Marilyn Baird and Jim Boyett, will be publishing their own more thoughtful response to recent articles in the N&R, I want to take a moment to respond to a bit from Doug Clark's column last week.

He writes:

The campaign is run by compassionate people concerned that many workers earn too little to live decently and raise their families. I can't argue with that. But their answer -- pass a city ordinance requiring employers to pay them more -- is all too easy. It doesn't take into account reams of potential economic and social consequences. Those include the impact on jobs, prices, business growth and even education.

While I appreciate Doug's admission that many workers earn too little to live decently and raise their families, I think he is making an inaccurate statement when he says that our campaign "doesn't take into account reams of potential economic and social consequences." (As one example, a simple review of this website reveals otherwise.)

Of course any economic policy change is going to have potential economic and social consequences. Raising the minimum wage in Greensboro is no exception. After taking into account what we considered to be relevant information/predictions - including precedents in other cities, the reality of the job situation in Greensboro, values we want our community to embody, economic theories and data predicting the potential consequences of such a hike - we decided that a hike in the minimum wage was one of many tools our community should use to address the rapidly growing disparities between the the rich and poor here in Greensboro. Earned income tax credits (on a state and federal level) are another such tool. This is not an either/or proposition.

One of the social consequences of the raised minimum wage that Doug predicts is that young people will drop out of school to earn $9.36/hour. This is an argument that was used in Mississippi when a group was pushing for a hike in the minimum wage from $5.15 to something less than $6 and I don't think it was terribly convincing there either. There are many reasons that I think this argument doesn't float. (One being that perhaps a better response to this problem is to improve our education system rather than scaring students into staying in school.) But commenter Tony Ledford summarized one well:

As to school attendance and an increase in the minimum wage to $9.36, one out of three is already dropping out of high school. Do you really think that an increase in the minimum wage would increase that significantly? It's already catastrophic.

Finally, I wonder what others thought about the end of Doug's column? "If we assume the policy would not magically increase the supply of money in Greensboro," he writes, "the effect would be a redistribution -- good for some, not for others. I'm too simple to figure it out."

As others have pointed out on this blog, this distinction (or at least our perceptions of this distinction) may provide some rough indicators for where people stand on this issue. (Though, as we've seen in comments, not everyone with incomes well over minimum wage is opposed to a wage hike.)

Atrios comments on minimum wage campaign

At Ed Cone's place, people are discussing Atrios/Duncan Black's comments on this minimum wage campaign, which he shared at Ed's request:

The basic issue is how footloose the industries are where the minimum wage is binding. There isn't strong evidence that moderate minimum wage increases have any major employment impact in the aggregate, but when we're talking about localized wage increases the potential for firms to move outside the area to escape the legislated wage exists.

Presumably a lot of minimum wage employment is low skill service employment - fast food, perhaps janitorial, etc... - and those firms aren't especially footloose. They serve local demand and their products aren't really exportable over any kind of distance. But, yes, knowing more
about the characteristics of minimum wage and near-min. wage jobs in the area is necessary to really think about the issue.

Duncan's presumption - that minimum wage employment in Greensboro isn't especially "footloose" - is backed up by research we've pointed to on this blog before.

________________________

Over at "not-Ed-Cone's" place, not-real-bloggers are commenting on the minimum wage campaign, too.

By what authority do we do? The majority hasn't a clue.*

Wow, I go out of town for a few days and opposition to the minimum wage hike strikes. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd imagine that it was planned...

But I'm not, so I'll just try to calmly start sharing some of my thoughts on, first, a letter to the editor in yesterday's paper. (I'll respond to the editorial and Doug Clark's column soon. Our committee co-chairs have also drafted a more thorough response to each of those pieces that will be published someone soon.)

Mr. James wrote: "Most people earning the minimum wage are not the primary source of household income. They are unskilled or inexperienced teens for whose work employers cannot pay much."

I'm not sure where Mr. James got his figures, but if he were to peruse this site, he'd see much evidence to the contrary. If fact, if he looked here, he'd see that 650 economists disagreed with him when they said, “While controversy about the precise employment effects of the minimum wage continues, research has shown that most of the beneficiaries are adults, most are female, and the vast majority are members of low-income working families."

Mr. James went on to write: "There is also the issue of freedom. Who is the Minimum Wage Council that it feels qualified to dictate the terms of work for me?"

The committee to raise the minimum wage in Greensboro is open to any resident of Greensboro who is concerned about this issue. This is an initiative, made possible through a local ordinance, to engage people in a democratic process to determine for themselves what this community looks like.

So it is the citizens of Greensboro who feel qualified, based on the fact that we live in a democracy, to set some minimal standards for our community. And it is the citizens of Greensboro who will decide this issue in November. Since Mr. James is a resident of Reidsville and not of Greensboro, then unless he owns a business in Greensboro, no one is dictating terms of work for him. If he does own a business in Greensboro, then it is perfectly appropriate for the residents of Greensboro to dictate a minimum set of terms of work for him.

*Anyone recognize the origin of the post title?