THE LIVING WAGE AS A FIGHT FOR ECONOMIC AND RACIAL JUSTICE

It’s been over a decade since the Congress legislatively boosted the minimum wage. More specifically, the minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since the Feds last raised it in 2009. Adjusted for inflation, the real value of the minimum wage has declined by 34% since 1968, and by 21% since 2009. Had it kept up with the economy’s post-1968 productivity growth, the minimum wage would now be around $21.50. At that hourly rate, the annual earnings of a full-time/year round minimum wage worker would be $44,720. In contrast, a minimum laborer today who works full-time, year round at $7.25 per hour, pulls in an annual salary of $15,080. The bottom line is that it’s gotten harder and harder out here for a minimum wage worker.

These are amongst the very workers who make it possible for the rest of us to go about our lives. Amongst the ones who clean up after us. The ones serving us at our fav restaurants. The ones who work those crazy night time hours making sure that the shelves of our grocery stores are adequately stocked. The ones crowded in the leisure and hospitality industries. The ones ringing you up at stores like Dollar General. The best estimates is that there is slightly more than a million workers working at wages at or below the federal minimum.

THE CRISIS AND CHALLENGE OF LOW-WAGE WORK

Particularly important, the plight of minimum wage workers in this country is reflective of a larger problem—namely, the continuing and contemporary struggle of low wage workers to secure basic economic rights, including the right to jobs with a living wage. “At their heart,” says a recent Oxfam report, “living wages are about working families being able to afford a basic but decent life-style in the context of their local communities, including, at minimum, sufficient income to cover necessities like food, housing, [including heating and cooling and other utilities], transportation, health care, child care, taxes, and more.” The Report goes on to state:

“Living wages should also allow for saving for life’s inevitable contingencies, like weddings and funerals, and some discretionary spending for entertainment that is part of leading a decent life.”

Minimum wage workers, then, are part of a broader group of laborers who earn less than a living wage.

That Oxfam America report touches on this broader issue by providing recent information on the number of workers in the United States earning less than $15 per hour. While the authors of the report make it abundantly clear that they do not consider $15 per hour to be a living wage, they do see that cutoff as an important starting point for getting a sense or “feel” of the magnitude of low wage labor in this country and which segments of the working class are more likely to be situated in occupations whose wages are incompatible with any reasonable sense of “economic security.”

According to the report, 52 million workers—or 32% of the country’s workforce— earn less than $15 per hour. And, unsurprisingly, women and non-Whites are disproportionately represented amongst those whose earning whose fall below the $15 per hour cutoff:

• 40% of working women earn less than $15 per hour

• 46% and 47% of Hispanic and Black women, respectively, fall beneath the $15 per hour floor

• 47% of all Black workers pull in less than $15 per hour, compared to a quarter (26%) of White workers.

• 58% of working single parents earn less than $15 per hour

While the crisis of low wage work shapes the lives of millions of employees, it is particularly acute for women, singles, African-Americans, and Hispanics.

The struggle to achieve a living wage, then, involves both economic and racial justice. Indeed, standing in solidarity with the working class as they press for a living wage is one of the most effective and visible ways in which to demonstrate our support of the “least of these.” It’s also a powerful way in which we honor the dignity of labor and especially recognize those who continually put their health at risk during COVID19 induced recession.

Economic and racial justice requires more than mere words. It requires, among other things, an ongoing commitment to build and participate in a movement that prioritizes the interests of the working class, and the well-being of Black labor ought to be central to that prioritization.