Profiles in Survival: Queenesia Wray

In his most recent "Profile in Survival", Yes! Weekly's Jordan Green profiles Queenesia Wray. Here is a portion of the profile, the full version of which can be found here:

On a recent Saturday afternoon she sat on the stoop of her cousin's house overlooking Ray Warren Homes. A New York native who earned her general equivalency degree at GTCC after dropping out during her sophomore year of high school, the 20-year-old Wray has held half a dozen jobs from food service to security and housecleaning, paying as little as $6 an hour and no more than $7.75.

"Black people struggle," she says. "We try to find the good jobs, but all the jobs are for seven-fifty or something. That's all that's out there."

She can say this from experience, having started her working life at the age of 16 selling books, knives and kitchen utensils on commission for Triad Star Co. Since then she's held fast-food jobs at Wendy's, Bojangles and Taco Bell, and cleaned apartments for the High Point Housing Authority. She quit her most recent job as a security guard because of her contention that the supervisor was demonstrating favoritism by allowing a cousin to shirk responsibilities.

Amy Goodman: Wages, immigration, and (so called) "free trade"

In a concise article published last week here, Amy Goodman connects the issues of immigration reform and free trade. Wages are also in there, which is the hook for us.

Our conversation about raising the minimum wage in Greensboro needs to take place on a local level and is probably most successfully launched by keeping it along the lines of: "Raising the minimum wage is a moral issue. People who work full time jobs should not live in poverty." But if we ignore the larger national and international systems and patterns that have gotten us in the particular situation we find ourselves in (even, or especially, in Greensboro), then we are merely applying a band-aid to a complex disease with no understanding or vision for how to really heal.

I'll be interested to hear any reactions to connections between this article and our minimum wage campaign if any of you have a chance to read it.

In Washington, minimum wage hike = thriving small businesses

From the New York Times (1/9/07):

Nearly a decade ago, when voters in Washington approved a measure that would give the state’s lowest-paid workers a raise nearly every year, many business leaders predicted that small towns on this side of the state line would suffer.

But instead of shriveling up, small-business owners in Washington say they have prospered far beyond their expectations. In fact, as a significant increase in the national minimum wage heads toward law, businesses here at the dividing line between two economies — a real-life laboratory for the debate — have found that raising prices to compensate for higher wages does not necessarily lead to losses in jobs and profits.

Read the whole article.

Minimum wage petition drive at Food Lion grocery stores

Come sign the minimum wage petition at a Food Lion near you. See below for dates and locations. Petitioners will be on hand from approximately 9 - 11am each day.

June 9 - Food Lion Store 1434, 4653 West Market St, Greensboro, NC, 27402

June 16 - Food Lion Store 14, 3219 S. Holden Road, Greensboro, NC, 27407

June 23 - Food Lion Store 440, 1023 Alamance Church Rd., Greensboro, NC, 27406

June 30 - Food Lion Store 32, 2208 Golden Gate Dr., Greensboro, NC, 27420

July 7 - Food Lion Store 2514, 3603 Groometown Rd, Greensboro, NC, 27407

July 14 - Food Lion Store 566, 3228 Randleman Road, Greensboro, NC, 27420

July 21 - Food Lion Store 259, 2316 E. Market Street, Greensboro, NC, 27420

July 28 - Food Lion Store 524, 1316 Lee's Chapel Road, Greensboro, NC, 27405

Congress passes federal minimum wage hike

NYT story here.

Profiles in Survival: Emily Staton

This week's Yes! Weekly "Profile in Survival" highlights Emily Staton, a Warren Wilson graduate who earns $7.50/hour at a local store. From the article:

Staton describes herself as "barely scraping by" on $7.50 per hour. After withholding taxes, that amounts to about $980 per month. Her full salary of $12,600 is above the federal poverty level, but not by much.More than half her monthly earnings is eaten up by rent. Staton lives in a two-story apartment building that affords her a modest-sized live-and-work room surrounded by a small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. In the past she has always lived with other people, but this time around she had difficulty finding compatible housemates and decided to go it alone.

Read the full profile here.

WTO, wages and China

Jim Boyett, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee, forwarded on this report, which is relevant to previous conversations here about economic policy and causes of job loss.

Costly Trade With China
Millions of U.S. jobs displaced with net job loss in every state
by Robert E. Scott

Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment. The rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs. Most of these jobs (1.8 million) have been lost since China entered the WTO in 2001. Between 1997 and 2001, growing trade deficits displaced an average of 101,000 jobs per year, or slightly more than the total employment in Manchester, New Hampshire. Since China entered the WTO in 2001, job losses increased to an average of 441,000 per year—more than the total employment in greater Dayton, Ohio. Between 2001 and 2006, jobs were displaced in every state and the District of Columbia. Nearly three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in manufacturing industries. Simply put, the promised benefits of trade liberalization with China have been unfulfilled.

As a matter of policy, China tightly pegs its currency's value to that of the dollar at a rate that encourages a large bilateral surplus with the United States. Maintaining this peg required the purchase of about $200 billion in U.S. Treasury Bills and other securities in 2006 alone.1 This intervention makes the yuan artificially cheap and provides an effective subsidy on Chinese exports; best estimates are that the rate of this effective subsidy is roughly 40%. China also engages in extensive suppression of labor rights; it has been estimated that wages in China would be 47% to 85% higher in the absence of labor repression. China has also been accused of massive direct subsidization of export production. Finally, it maintains strict, non-tariff barriers to imports. As a result, China's exports to the United States of $288 billion in 2006 were six times greater than U.S. exports to China, which were only $52 billion (Table 1). China's trade surplus was responsible for 42.6% of the United States' total, non-oil trade deficit. This is by far the United States' most imbalanced trading relationship. Unless and until China revalues (raises) the yuan and eliminates these other trade distortions, the U.S. trade deficit and job losses will continue to grow rapidly in the future.

Major findings of this study:

• The 1.8 million jobs opportunities lost nationwide since 2001 are distributed among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with the biggest losers, in numeric terms: California (-269,300), Texas (-136,900), New York (-105,900), Illinois (-79,900), Pennsylvania (-78,200), North Carolina (-77,200), Florida (-71,900), Ohio (-66,100), Georgia (-60,400), and Massachusetts (-59,300) (Table 2A).
• The 10 hardest-hit states, as a share of total state employment, are: New Hampshire (-13,000, -2.1%), North Carolina (-77,200, -2.0%), California (-269,300, -1.8%), Massachusetts (-59,300, -1.8%), Rhode Island (-8,400, -1.8%), South Carolina (-29,200, -1.6%), Vermont (-4,900, -1.6%), Oregon (-25,700, -1.6%), Indiana (-45,200, -1.5%), and Georgia (-60,400, -1.5%) (Table 2B).

To continue reading, click here.

N&R Letter

Rev. Charles Hawes has a brief letter to the editor in yesterday's News & Record responding to Charles Davenport's column from last week.

Faith Matters: Raising the minimum wage (N&R)

The News and Record published a slightly revised version of an essay I wrote about the minimum wage and the Sabbath and that was published on this site several weeks ago. You can read it here.

Boyett responds to Davenport

Jim Boyett, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee, responded to a May 13, 2007 column by Charles Davenport:

When I read Charles Davenport’s article against raising the minimum wage in Greensboro to $9.36 per hour I burst out laughing. He implies that my motivation
for wanting the increased minimum wage must be Karl Marx and socialism.

Well Charles my actual motivation comes from the 20 years I spent as a Marine defending our Constitution. The Marine Corps motto is “ Semper Fi “
or always faithful. The real secret to building a successful organization is trust. Faithfulness and trust in the successful organization is a two way street. If your company or your country wants you to be faithful to them, they need to be faithful to you.

It seems to me that the politicians in this country were unfaithful to us when they made a trade deal with Communist China. The Communist promised to protect the trademarks, patents and the capital of Multinational Corporations doing business in China and we promised the Communist unlimited access to our market. As a result Chinese imports of textiles soared and 200,000 North Carolina workers lost their jobs.

The working people of this country should not be required to compete against the slave labor of Communist China. We want to stop wages from declining further, restore the minimum wage to the value it had in 1968 and get rid of the political leadership that has given 80% of us stagnant and declining wages.

As I see it this is a political problem not an economic problem.

Profiles in Survival: Reid James

"There are three or four thousand dollars worth of medical bills at Grace Community Church that are probably not going to be paid," says Reid James. "I'm going to have to talk to Moses Cone and tell them to put me on their charity plan; otherwise I'm going into default."

A diminutive woman rarely seen without a backpack and a large to-go cup of coffee, the 44-year-old James presents a demeanor that is equal parts headstrong determination, measured compassion and nervous energy. As a former substance abuser in recovery, she is one step off the street. She also faces some mounting health challenges. And while she harbors no illusions that reentry into the job market will constitute a complete remedy, James has thrown herself into the search for work with single-minded focus.

Read the rest of Jordan Green's profile of Reid James at Yes! Weekly.

Hourly workers prepared for potential negative impacts of higher minimum wage

According to The Employment Guide(R) Hourly Employee Survey published by Dominion Enterprises, two-thirds of hourly employees favor an increase in the minimum wage even if that means prices on goods and services will be raised. One-half of those surveyed said they favored the increase even if it meant that a co-worker might lose her job.

For more information click here.

More response to the Debbage Report

Jim Boyett, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee responds to the report on the state of the economy in Greensboro that was released today and is now available here. (Previous response here.)

The News & Record's feature article May 11, 2007 was, "City gets wake-up call on the economy." It seems that the Joseph M Bryan Foundation and others have funded a study by UNCG professor Keith Debbage that finds:

" The city's economic troubles extend far beyond manufacturing workers.The ravages of the manufacturing layoffs from 2000 through 2005 have penetrated nearly every facet of the local economy, affecting homeowners, professionals and workers in most businesses."

This is really not news to the tens of thousands of families in Greensboro who have suffered through a major collapse of income since 2000. The median Greensboro family saw its actual inflation adjusted income decline by an incredible 21% since 2000.

Now for the sad part. Action Greensboro proposes as a solution to this problem a call to action with focus on jobs,skills and economic development. Even though they have been doing the same thing for 20 years now they are serious! Even though they have been saying for 20 years that we need to take advantage of our well- educated work force and Universities now they really mean it!

Why is it so hard for well educated, well meaning people like Action Greensboro and the Bryan Foundation to face the fact that our community was sold out by our establishment political leadership? The deal was that China promised to protect patents, trade marks and capital if we would give them unlimited access to our market.

When this deal was made the politicians knew it would benefit multinationals and banks at the expense of domestic manufacturing. Is it not a fact that Greensboro's decline can be directly linked to the elimination of tariffs on textiles? Was it just a coincidence that as Chinese imports of textiles soared 500% North Carolina textile manufacturers went bankrupt and laid of 200,000 workers? Isn't the same thing now happening in the furniture industry? Why will the process stop with just the furniture and textile industries?

There is tremendous potential for the multinationals of the world to export knowledge based employment in the United States to cheaper educated labor in third world countries.

Anything that can be done on a computer can be done just as well and cheaper in foreign countries. Russian scientists are just as intelligent as American scientists and they will work for 1/6th the pay. Indian computer programmers and engineers can do anything we can do and do it for 75% less pay. Nike manufactures golf shoes for Tiger Woods in Viet Nam because they can hirer 30 workers in Viet Nam for the cost of one in North Carolina.

We would like the Bryan Foundation and Action Greensboro to seriously look at the underlying trends that are causing such devastation for the working people of Greensboro.

Do the City of Greensboro and its people exist for the purpose of improving the wealth of the owners of Nike,GE and Citi Bank? If it is good for GE, Citi and Nike is it good for Greensboro? Do the multinationals of the world and the people of the United States have shared self interest? Are we witnessing a perversion of the actual ideals of capitalism?

Adam Smith, the widely recognized father of capitalism in, "The Wealth of Nations" said it well, "It is but equity...that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged."

Should Action Greensboro and the Bryan Foundation be working with the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee to develop the political power to challenge Nike, Citi and GE?Is the real problem to much political power in the hands of multinationals and to little power in the hands of the people?

Debbage Report: Greensboro wages low

As reported in the N&R this morning, Keith Debbage recently released a report for Action Greensboro about the state of the economy in Greensboro.

Although the article notes that the sad state of the local econony is no surprise, it goes on to note some statistics that some may not know:

• Despite tens of thousands of textile, furniture and apparel layoffs, Greensboro still ranks second in manufacturing jobs among the 10 Southeastern cities in the study, including Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Charlotte. Those workers are ranked second-to-last in wages, however.


• Average wages here lag in every major industry, including financial services, professional and business services and transportation/warehousing.


• The city's tax base growth is well behind the other four N.C. cities in the study.

The bright spot in the study: Greensboro is a well-educated market, with 24
percent holding a bachelor's degree or more.

(Emphasis is mine.)

The combination of low wages and high levels of education might give pause to those who have argued that increasing levels of education increases wages.

This compiled information is helpful for people struggling to figure out how to address income disparities and poverty in Greensboro. I hope it will be posted somewhere online if it isn't already. I'd also like to have an opportunity to talk with Debbage more about it because I'm not sure I understand his last quote in the article.

"Even though we've had significant de-industrialization, we've also had deep-pocket private foundations that have come to the fore and have basically sustained this effort," Debbage said. "That's our ace in the hole."

I'd argue that our "ace in the hole" and the legacy for which Greensboro really should be proud has generally been grassroots movements which have raised awareness (through sit-ins, strikes, or other efforts) of injustices and worked to address them. If the "deep pocket private foundations" could manage to partner with these grassroots efforts, I think we'd be on our way to a really progressive community with a stable economy.

Support the national minimum wage hike: Call your representatives

Through tomorrow (Friday, May 11), call your representatives in DC toll free and tell Congress to raise the minimum wage. (Details here.)

Background from the Let Justice Roll website:

By February 1st, both the House and Senate passed minimum wage bills that increased the wage in three steps to $7.25. Yet, four months later, the bill is stalled and millions of minimum wage workers are still making $5.15 an hour. Tell Congress to stop playing politics and finish the job! The House and Senate were able to agree on a minimum wage bill when including the federal
minimum wage increase in the recently vetoed Iraq supplemental spending bill. A minimum wage raise deserves to move forward on its own merits. It is time to send a stand-alone minimum wage bill to the President for signing!

If the minimum wage is passed into law today, Wednesday, May 9, 2007 a full time minimum wage worker would only be making $5.85 on July 9, 2007, $6.55 an hour on July 9, 2008 and finally $7.25 an hour on July 9, 2009.

URGENT ACTION:Call your Representative and Senator TODAY:Toll-free at 1-800-459-1887

Maryland governor passes statewide living wage legislation

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed over 200 measures into law yesterday. One was to establish a statewide living wage for government contract workers of $11.30 in the Baltimore/Washington areas and $8.50 for the rest of the state.

As most of you know, living wage legislation is generally designed to make governments accountable for paying workers a reasonable wage. A helpful side effect of such legislation is that it will encourage companies who contract with the goverment to pay its workers living wages for non-government contracts as well.

Minimum wage efforts, such as ours in Greensboro, are designed to raise the government mandated wage levels for all employers on local, state and federal levels.

Given that we have had a federal minimum wage in the US for many decades, minimum wage hikes have been more successful and popular in the US in general, but this move by Maryland - the first state to enact such legislation - may change that.

(Another law Gov. O'Malley signed yesterday included an apology for slavery by the state of Maryland. Read more about both laws here.)

Yes! Weekly: Profile of Daisy Holland

"In the sixties when Martin Luther King had a march on Washington I had a small child," Daisy Holland says. "I was poor and living in New York. I always wanted to get involved. So after I raised my children, I got some training to become a nursing assistant."

So starts Jordan Green's first profile for Yes! Weekly of low wage workers in Greensboro. Click here to read the entire piece.

NPR: Low Wage America, Part 2

Noah Adams profiled Sandy Hicks in his series on Low Wage America. You can read about or listen to her profile there, but I want to point out two things that stood out to me. Being as self-centered as I am, I'm pointing out common experiences I've had with Mrs. Hicks.

Mrs. Hicks was involved in a living wage campaign in Knoxville, TN when this story was done (June 2003), so I'm already feeling some kind of solidarity with her.

And, as if that weren't enough, she talks about cleaning dorm rooms after the students at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville leave for the summer. It sounds like grueling work (esp. for the less than $9/hour she is making after 25 years of work at UT). And I can only identify with one small part of it. That is when she mentions cleaning out the microfridges, which are the dorm sized refrigerator/freezers with microwaves on top. (They aren't called microfridges because they are small.) When I worked at Davidson College, I led students on international trips during the summers and, as part of our fundraising efforts, we cleaned and moved hundreds these microfridges at the end of the year. For this work alone, I can assure you that Mrs. Hicks deserves much more than the wages she is currently being paid.

And, as disgusting as freshmen men's refrigerators can be, cleaning them out can't possibly compare to the other tasks Mrs. Hicks mentions (especially those related to blood and vomit).

NPR: Low Wage America

NPR's Noah Adams created a series of profiles of low-wage workers around the United States. Click here for a story about Laressa Matthews who runs a family day care center at her home in Baltimore.

After business expenses, Matthews makes about $15K/year, has no savings account and has past due bills for emergency room visits. Day care providers in Maryland get paid holidays and two weeks of vacation but not health care benefits. Her average workday is 13 hours long.

(Thanks to Yelper for pointing us to these profiles.)

Yes! Weekly to profile minimum wage workers

Jordan Green, news editor and reporter for Yes! Weekly, will be profiling local workers who make less than $9/hour in the upcoming weeks. I'll link to those stories when they are posted.

(I'd hoped to write such profiles and still might this summer, but it'll be much better reading to have Jordan do it instead of me.)

Minimum wage hike and low income subsidies, cont.

I've been thinking more about Cara Michele's very good question about how a minimum wage hike will impact workers who are receiving need-based subsidies like Medicare. I haven't yet reached any conclusions, but I do think it is important to remember that none of these efforts to deal with the growing economic disparities and outright poverty in this country - whether it is need-based subsidies, earned income tax credits, the minimum wage, homeless shelters or other housing programs - are really solving the deep-rooted problems. I think these are all efforts to get us closer to the horizon of dealing with these injustices.

I also do not think it is necessary to choose one of these initiatives over the others. An earned income tax credit (on a federal and/or state level) can complement a minimum wage hike. And I think that while a minimum wage hike will, as Cara Michele points out, result in the short term in some workers losing some benefits, there are ways to make that system more compatible and more just as well.

The first thing I think we should do is to add asset screens to the assessment tools for need-based subsidies. When I applied for a mortgage, the bank didn't only want to know what my wages were; they also asked about savings accounts, property and other investments. Why shouldn't such assets be included when we apply for need-based subsidies? Once we factor in such information, a $3/hour raise in wages becomes less significant when it comes to determining needs and, in a more just system, would not knock a person out of eligibility for the benefit.

Finally, I don't mean to sound too dramatic, but, while I think it is terribly important to understand how policy changes will impact individuals in the short term, I also think it would have been a shame if 19th century abolitionists had given up on their efforts because they recognized that newly freed African Americans would suddenly be without some of the securities provided to them in slavery. How much better would it have been if more thought had been put into those new needs created in the aftermath of emancipation (or if the promise of 40 acres and a mule had actually been kept)?

So thanks to Cara Michele for raising this question so that all of us could think more clearly about potential negative side effects of a minimum wage hike. The wage hike won't solve poverty, though I think it will move us closer to a just system, but even after it is (?) approved in November by the voters, we'll still have more work to do. Reforming assessment tools for need-based benefits is one of those tasks.