Religious leaders call Santa Fe's living wage ordinance a "moral choice"

(Column first published here.)

Eight years ago, at its 65th General Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution supporting living wage campaigns. The resolution urged its member congregations across North America to become involved in these campaigns so that workers would be treated with justice. It did so by quoting Deuteronomy, a text held sacred by all three Abrahamic religious traditions: "You shall not oppress a hired laborer that is poor and needy, whether that laborer be of your people or of the strangers that are in the land within your gates." (Deuteronomy 24:14). Certainly as a religious body the URJ has not been alone. Many churches have been in the forefront of support for Living Wage Legislation as evidenced by the resolution passed at the 1997 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalists of America and the resolution passed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in 1999. It has been the constant teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since Pope Leo XIII that no one should work and live in poverty.

Perhaps the most difficult part in the framing of the URJ resolution was picking a single Biblical verse to quote. The Bible is replete with statements calling us to rally in the cause of social justice. In what are called the "Holiness Codes" of Leviticus 19, we are instructed to care for "the needy and the stranger," and to maintain honest business practices. We are also warned not to "stand idle while our neighbor bleeds." The prophet Amos (2:7) speaks disparagingly of those who "trample on the heads of the poor" and who "deny justice to the oppressed." These citations do not even scratch the surface of Biblical exhortations to pursue justice.

In the years following the URJ resolution, and those of the UUA and ELCA, the need for legislation to provide a living wage to workers in our communities has only increased. It seems only fair, and moral, that those who work within a community should be able to live with dignity in that community. At the very least, that is what we would want for our children, and the children of our neighbors — the ability to live with dignity.

The City Council is about to take up the issue of Living Wage legislation again, through amendments to the current law. This time though, the business community and the labor community have come to an agreement about the proposed changes. Changes that will serve us all well. The City Council will hold hearings during October and vote on the proposed changes at a meeting on Nov. 14. The changes would expand the living wage, starting Jan. 1, 2008, to cover all employees in Santa Fe, not just the current 60 percent. They would put into place an automatic cost of living increase every year starting Jan. 1, 2009. Finally, the baseline living wage will be set at the current $9.50 per hour.

We applaud the visionaries of the Santa Fe Living Wage Network, the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, the New Mexico Council of Churches, the Lodgers Association, the local immigrants rights group, the Restaurant Association, the 22 unions, and the Santa Fe Alliance who came together in support of the amendments to the Santa Fe Living Wage legislation. Given its moral basis and its broad based support from both labor and business, we urge the citizens of Santa Fe to encourage the City Council to pass the proposal as submitted and set a positive precedent for labor/management cooperation.

Rabbi Marvin Schwab of Temple Beth Shalom, the Rev. Richard W. Murphy of St. Bede's Episcopal Church and three additional Santa Fe church leaders signed this commentary.

Billionaires Up, America Down

From an article by Holly Sklar:

When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.

Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only.

[...]

The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn’t party time for America.

We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures.

We have a record 482 billionaires — and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.

Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires — and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won’t get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).

Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.

Read the entire article here.

"Many paychecks stretched to the breaking point"

Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It’s starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.

Check out the full AP story (published in the Asheville Citizen Times) from NY about the national cost of living increases in the US.

Study shows job growth not dampened by minimum wage raises

Oregon will also be raising its minimum wage on January 1, 2008, to keep up with the cost of living. Last month, the Oregon Center for Public Policy released a study showing that not only did the dire consequences predicted by opponents of the wage hike not materialize, but that, since the minimum wage was raised in Oregon, job growth has actually been heartier there than in other states.

A few highlights from the press release:

"The data shows that the restaurant association was engaged in fear mongering," Leachman said, referring to claims by the Oregon Restaurant Association in the 2002 Voters’ Guide that "nearly 30,000 more Oregonians could lose their jobs" as a result of Measure 25.

OCPP’s analysis also calls into question claims by the Oregon Restaurant Association that increases to the minimum wage would cause menu prices to "escalate out of control." In the Portland-Salem metro area, the only area in Oregon where OCPP could easily track restaurant prices, it found that prices have risen more slowly than they have nationwide since the enactment of Measure 25. From 2002 through the first half of this year, restaurant prices
nationally increased 14.7 percent, compared to 13.4 percent in the Portland-Salem area. A variety of factors in addition to wages influence restaurant prices, including the cost of food and energy.

Minimum wage hikes

The federal minimum wage will increase to $6.55 (from the current $5.85) on July 1, 2008.

But some states are getting a head start and further increasing their minimum wages above the federally mandated minimum. Here are a few examples of where the states' minimum wage bars will be set as of January 1, 2008:

Montana - $6.25

Washington - $8.07

Florida - $6.79

Ohio - $7.00

(On a personal note: After moving to Manhattan, I'm even

more painfully aware of how woefully inadequate even our most progressive and substantial minimum wage levels are.)

Welcome to the New World Job Order

From Z-Mag:

This past October, Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the U.S. with revenues of more than $310 billion a year, announced it was going to double the number of its workers employed part-time —from 20 percent to 40 percent of its total work force—while reducing full-time jobs by yet unknown thousands at the company. Given Wal-Mart’s total U.S. employment of 1.3 million, that means 260,000 more Wal-Mart workers will now make roughly half of what full-time employees earn. What little health and other company-paid benefits the 260,000 had as full-time employees will be reduced or eliminated. Wal-Mart will save an estimated $3.042 billion a year in wages and benefits by doubling its part-time work force to 40 percent, for a total of 520,000 part-timers. . .

. . . 60 million workers in the U.S. don’t have a regular, permanent, full-time job any more in America. That’s more than 40 percent of the entire employed U.S. work force.

5 years of economic growth yields no improvement for NC's working families

According to new census data, the NC Justice Center reports that:

A half-decade of economic growth has failed to improve the financial well-being of the typical North Carolina family. Despite some slight improvements in 2006, median household income and poverty rates remain essentially unchanged from their 2001 levels. Moreover, an estimated 16.6 percent of North Carolinians lack health insurance.

Read the entire report here.

Campaign Update (from Manhattan)

Although I've moved to NY to take a new job, the minimum wage campaign continues in a strong way. The lack of updates here is merely explained by the distractions I've faced with a move and not by any lack of movement in the campaign's progress to raise the minimum wage in Greensboro.

An update from campaign committee co-chair, Jim Boyett, includes the status of the petition drive. More than 4,500 signatures have been collected so far and the current goal is to collect a few thousand more at the November elections and submit those to the city council by December 15. This should give the new council time to respond to the petition and, if it chooses to deny the request, for the referendum to go on the May ballot.

I'll continue updating this site with campaign information and links to articles of interest.