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Title: The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy by Robert Pollin, Stephanie Luce ISBN: 1-56584-588-9 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
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Summary: The Bible of the Living Wage Movement
Comment: Review of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy by Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce
Every so often a work of contemporary issue analysis comes along that illuminates the often-arcane world of professional activists in language that renders it accessible to the general public. In The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (New Press), economists Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce have not only provided a long-overdue assessment of the fifty-plus living wage campaigns across the country, they have created an invaluable tool for the organizers currently engaged in those efforts. Since the book's printing, I've found grateful readers and dog-eared copies in campaign offices from Montana to Maryland.
Since the modern living wage movement began with the passage of the Baltimore living wage ordinance in 1994, more than twenty-five cities and counties have passed living wage laws, and campaigns are underway in over two dozen more jurisdictions, making the effort "the most interesting (and under-reported) grassroots enterprise to emerge since the civil rights movement" according to the journalist Robert Kuttner. Defenders of other political movements of the last thirty years might disagree, but there's no question that the thousands of workers who have received a raise or new benefits due to a living wage law appreciate their significance.
The campaigns, which begin with the idea that no one working full time should be forced to live in poverty, require businesses receiving public dollars to pay wages significantly above the minimum wage, usually enough to raise a family at or above the poverty level. Many organizers would prefer to cover more workers by raising the minimum wage for all jobs, but where that is not legal or politically viable, the efforts target jobs created with public dollars -- namely public employees, employees working for public contractors, and in many jurisdictions, workers employed in businesses receiving public subsidies, whether industrial revenue bonds, low-interest loans, or tax abatements.
Most of the campaigns have met with fierce resistance from both the business community and elected officials, who have fought the passage of ordinances and worked to evade them after approval. Baltimore quickly moved to hire workfare workers for city contract work immediately after the passage of is ordinance. Minneapolis has found creative ways to distribute corporate subsidies without requiring recipients to comply with the laws. Pollin and Luce, who headed the economics team that researched the cost of the Los Angeles Living Wage Ordinance, convincingly debunk opponents' claims that living wage laws add enormous costs to financially strapped municipalities and create unemployment among the very populations they are intended to help. They cite an initial study of the effects of the Baltimore ordinance by the Preamble Center for Public Policy. Based on phone interviews with contractors, Mark Weisbrot and Michelle Sforza-Roderick found that the cost of winning city contract bids did not increase after the living wage ordinance took effect. Increased worker productivity and reduced absenteeism brought on by higher wages combined with market competition for contracts to hold steady the costs to the city. In addition, no companies reported laying off workers or hiring fewer than they would have without a living wage ordinance. Overall, after two years of experience, the predictions of living wage opponents that the law would increase unemployment and raise costs to the city were not borne out.
Pollin and Luce convincingly explain the methodology they use estimate the cost of a living wage ordinance, and prove that - despite opponents' claims - the costs of ordinances is restricted to a small percentage of a municipality's budget, and propose solutions to minimize the cost even more. They demonstrate the high social value by showing that the benefits of such laws - wage increases to the lowest-wage workers - are concentrated, while the costs are diffuse, spread over the entire tax base.
The authors also produce a withering critique of the conventional business subsidy approach to economic development practiced by the federal government and imitated by most cities and states, and they persuasively examine the social costs of outsourcing by municipalities. Instead, they propose a "high-road" alternative strategy that prioritizes high wages and high productivity by investing in public schools, worker training and retention, public safety, and efficient physical infrastructure. Living wage laws complement this strategy by removing firms' incentives to compete by paying poverty wages, forcing them to compete by increasing worker productivity.
Central labor councils and affiliated locals have invested in living wage campaigns, usually in conjunction with chapters of ACORN, the New Party, and civic and religious leaders, for a variety of reasons. The efforts have proven to be an effective vehicle to organize community and religious support for raising wages for workers in many of the lowest-paid sectors. Leaders of higher-paid locals whose workers are not directly affected realize that raising the wage floor strengthens their positions during bargaining. By covering all city contracts, the living wage laws erode municipalities' incentives for contracting out. By insisting that policy initiatives be judged by their effectiveness at creating good jobs, the campaigns raise an important challenge to the conventional business subsidy model of economic development. And they broadcast labor's role as the defenders of working families - both organized and unorganized - to the media and the general public.
Pollin and Luce have produced an excellent work; reading this book and engaging in a local living wage campaign are worthy New Years' resolutions for any labor activist.
Other resources (partial list)
National contacts: ACORN, Jen Kern: (202) 547-2500 AFL-CIO, Christine Silvia: (202) 637-5177 New Party, Adam Glickman: (718) 246-3713
Local contacts: Boston Jobs and Living Wage Campaign, Lisa Clauson, (617) 436-7100 Solidarity Sponsoring Committee, Kerry Miciotto, (410) 837-3458 Chicago Living Wage Campaign, Jon Green: (312) 939-4136 Cleveland SEIU Local 47, Willie Howard, (216) 621-0995 Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, Joyce Lartigue, (313) 896-2600 Duluth Coalition for a Living Wage, Erik Peterson: (218) 722-0577 Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition, Madeline Janis-Aparicio: (213) 486-9880 Maryland State Living Wage Campaign, Steve Smitson, (301) 270-0442 Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee, Bill Dempsey, (414) 444-0525 Minneapolis/St. Paul Living Wage Campaigns, Progressive Minnesota: (612) 641-6199 Montgomery County (MD) Living Wage Campaign, Ann Swinburn, (301) 495-7004 Missoula (MT) Living Wage Campaign, Derek Birnie: (406) 728-5297 New Haven Living Wage Campaign, Andrea Cole, (203) 624-5161 Oakland Living Wage Campaign, Jim DuPont, (510) 893-3181 Portland Jobs with Justice, Nancy Haque: (503) 236-5573 Working Partnerships USA (San Jose, CA), Robert Dhondrup: (408) 269-7872
Tom Hucker is a campaign consultant with the Progressive America Fund. He has advised living wage campaigns since 1995.
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Title: Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us by Holly Sklar, Laryssa Mykyta, Susan Wefald ISBN: 0896086836 Publisher: South End Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity by Robert Pollin ISBN: 1859846734 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Debating Empire (New Left Review Debates) by Gopal Balakrishnan, Stanley Aronowitz, Giovanni Arrighi ISBN: 1859844529 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: 04 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: After the New Economy by Doug Henwood ISBN: 1565847709 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky ISBN: 0679721134 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 23 October, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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