Have you heard about a Living Wage? Do you know what it is? Generally it’s about requiring employers to pay a “Living Minimum Wage” to their employees. The US Federal Government has a minimum pay rate of $5.15/ per hour this is not enough to live on even if you work 40 hours a week. A person with children could hardly expect to raise them in any sort of manner without being completely poverty stricken. The only person who could live off this wage is someone who doesn’t need to money to support themselves or others. In order to raise people out of poverty we need to give them a wage that can pay for a decent roof over their head, food for the table, and clean clothes. This is where the Living Wage Campaigns come in. They have sprouted up all over America mainly in cities, where direct control is a lot easier than at the US Government level. Some campaigns require all business doing business in the city pay a living wage, which varies depending on where the city is, but can go up towards $12 an hour.
There have been 79 cities that have passed this ordinance, according to the
ACORN’s website some of which are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago. One of the most recent cities, which said yes to a living wage, was New Orleans, LA, which required a minimum of $6.15. This isn’t much of a raise over the federal mandate, but has a wide sweep into the private sector. (For more details on this read an article in The Nation by Jim Hightower:
Going Down the Road ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizing for Reform Now, is one of the leading organizations for the Living Wage Movement. They have sponsored and recently won 11 battles. Their web site has a lot of information, including all the living wage campaigns that have passed around the country.
So what can you do? Help out with a campaign that is going on in your town. There are around 75 campaigns taking place today around the country. For a full list see ACORN’s web site (below). If there isn’t a campaign in your city or state, start one. The resource center for ACORN at the Living Wage Campaign web sitehas a lot of detailed information. There are also campaigns going on at the state level. A list of the states that are active in a campaign are listed below. If you live in one of those states, you can help! There’s also a living wage campaign going on at many universities, to help raise the wages of university workers, such as working in the cafeterias.
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