What is a living wage?

A living wage is an hourly wage sufficient to support bare-bones living expenses for a worker and the worker’s family.

Many full-time workers in Virginia and throughout the country are not paid enough to make ends meet. For example, the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. Working 52 weeks a year, a full-time minimum-wage worker earns $10,712. Yet a single adult needs an annual average of $16,549 ($7.96 an hour) without employer-paid health benefits and $14,196 ($7.00 an hour) with health benefits to cover bare-bones living expenses, according to a 2001 study published in Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies that Work for All of Us. One out of four workers in the United States earns less than $8.00 an hour.

The typical minimum wage worker is not a teenager living at home with parents, but an adult woman. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers are over the age of 20. Almost half are over the age of 25.

Families need more earnings than single adults to support themselves. Two working adults with two children, for example, need an annual average of $35,637 without employer-paid health benefits and $30,812 with health benefits. The minimum living expense budget used in the Raise the Floor study covers only housing, health care, food and household supplies, child care, utilities, transportation and taxes. Other expenses many people take for granted, like birthday presents, books, vacations, movies, piano lessons, charitable contributions, or saving for college expenses or retirement are not included.

For a family of four to earn enough to meet basic expenses, each wage-earner in a two-wage earner family would need to make at least $8.56 per hour working full-time 52 weeks a year. If one adult stays home to take care of young children, thus saving on child care expenses, the other adult would need to make $28,087, or $13.50 an hour without health benefits. With health benefits, the family would need at least $22,262, or $10.70 an hour. A single parent with one child needs to make $28,796 without health care benefits or $23,179 with benefits. That’s $13.84 per hour, or $11.14 per hour, respectively.

The Virginia Organizing Project believes that any person working full time should not have to live in poverty. There is dignity in working to support oneself and one’s family. Employers need to understand that if a job is worth doing, then it should provide the worker a sufficient wage to pay for the necessities of life.

Why don’t all full-time workers make a living wage?

That’s what we’d like to know. Corporate profits have increased by 64 percent and worker productivity increased 74.2 percent since 1968. However, hourly wages decreased by 3 percent in the same time period.

Making sure that all workers earn a living wage not only benefits low-income workers and their families, it benefits the entire economy. Studies show that workers who are able to meet their basic living expenses are more stable and productive than workers under financial stress. If workers are hungry because they gave the last of their food to their children for breakfast, then these workers are less likely to be able to focus on getting their jobs done. If workers are worried about where they will find another place to live every time they face a rent increase, then they are less able to improve the quality and efficiency of the work they are doing. Companies that pay living wages are just as profitable, if not more so, that those that do not. They also experience less turnover in their workforce and lower recruitment and training costs as a result.

Workers who can pay for their own family living expenses rely less on government and private social service programs to fill the gaps. Taxpayers subsidize employers who do not pay living wages to their workers through public housing subsidies, childcare subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid and a host of other emergency services. Non-profit organizations are stretched to the limit to provide food banks, homeless shelters, fuel assistance, child care and health care services to full-time working families unable to cover all of these necessities themselves.

Work paid for with tax dollars needs to pay a living wage

Private employers who do not pay a living wage impose the costs of not providing for basic necessities for their workers onto other taxpayers. One would expect that public employers, such as local governments, school districts and public universities, who pay their workers with public tax revenues, would at least pay their own workers a living wage. However, this often isn’t the case.

Public employees — school cafeteria workers, teacher’s aides, data entry personnel, clerks, custodians, parking attendants, groundskeepers — are just some of the types of workers paid less than a living wage with our tax dollars in many Virginia communities. In many localities, workers making less than a living wage are directly on the payroll of local governments, school districts and public universities. In other cases, governments, school districts and public universities sign contracts with private companies to provide some of these workers. This process is called “contracting out,” and the workers who perform public services under government contracts with private companies are called “contract workers.”

Local governments, school boards and public universities often sign contracts with private companies who do not pay their workers a living wage for the work they perform that is paid for with our tax dollars. Private companies make a profit from these contracts, or they wouldn’t even bid on them. However, when the private profit comes at the expense of paying a living wage to the workers, taxpayers shoulder the burden of paying for public services for basic living expenses these workers need but cannot afford.

What taxpayers can do to make sure that public workers are paid a living wage

Alexandria was the first city in Virginia to pass a living wage ordinance, which covers all city employees and contract workers. The Tenants’ and Workers’ Support Committee, a VOP affiliate, organized a coalition of community groups, churches and unions in Alexandria to approach the city council with a living wage ordinance. They built strong public support to see the measure through. Then a coalition in Charlottesville convinced the city council first to raise all of its direct employees to a living wage, and then to pass an ordinance covering city contract workers. Pressure from employees, students and community groups moved the University of Virginia to raise the lowest wages for direct employees from $6.15 to $8.65 an hour, and efforts are underway to cover the University’s contract workers.

Successful living wage campaigns have a ripple effect. Albemarle County, just outside Charlottesville, raised its direct employees to a living wage shortly after Charlottesville did. The Albemarle County School Board is now working to raise all of its employees to a living wage, even in the face of difficult cuts in state revenue to local school districts.

Students, faculty, staff and community members successfully organized to raise the wages of 290 low-wage workers at the College of William and Mary; nearby James City County raised all of its direct employees to a living wage as well.

In Richmond, the school board and the city raised their direct employees to a living wage, and the Richmond Living Wage Coalition is now working to get contract workers to a living wage as well. Students at James Madison University in Harrisonburg and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg are beginning efforts to raise all workers to a living wage at those institutions, too.

Basic steps to organizing a living wage campaign

1. Do a little research first.
1. Ask local government officials (town, city, county, school district) how much workers are paid in all job categories. Find out what contract workers are paid.
2. If your community has a public university or community college, ask the chief financial officer how much the lowest wage direct employees and contract workers get paid.
3. Find out what local private employers pay their hourly workers in various job categories.
4. Calculate a living wage for the local area you live in. (See accompanying article in this issue, or use an average figure from Raise the Floor.)
5. Compare your local living wage figure to the lowest wages paid by your local government, school district, colleges, private employers, etc. If your living wage figure is higher than what employers are paying, start a campaign.
2. Build organizational support for living wages in your community.

Contact other community groups, religious congregations, unions and student groups in the area and ask for support in establishing a living wage for the employer you’ve targeted. Ask these groups to endorse the campaign and make commitments to generate letters to the editor, phone calls, e-mails and petitions throughout the campaign.

3. Develop a strategy.
1. Decide which employer to start with

getting the local government or school board to establish a living wage for its own employees is usually easier to start with than a private employer. The rationale is that taxpayer dollars should not pay poverty wages, and as taxpayers, we all have a say in the matter. Public workers are our employees.

Be strategic in your decision about which employer to start with. For example, if the school board employees 100 workers below a living wage, and the county government only 15 workers below a living wage, more workers would benefit if the school board raised their wages first. However, it might be easier to get the county government to do it first because fewer workers affected means lower over-all costs in moving their wages up.

You may find that all direct public employees are paid a living wage, but that contract workers are not. Then it makes sense to work on an ordinance for contract workers.

2. Identify who has the power to make the decision to enact a living wage.

For example, if you want to raise the wages of direct city employees, and wage levels are set by the city council in an annual budget process, then you need to get the city council to vote favorably on it. If the city council has seven members, you need to get at least four council members to vote in favor of establishing a living wage.

4. Take action and keep the pressure on.
1. Develop a one-page flyer that clearly states your first goal and asks people to take specific action. For example, include the names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and fax numbers of all city council members on the flyer, asking people to contact or visit them and voice their support for a living wage.
2. Keep a steady stream of letters to the editor, phone calls, e-mails, etc. going in to your decision-makers. Two letters a week for 10 weeks is better than 20 letters the first week and nothing the next several weeks.
3. Turn out people from a broad spectrum of your community to speak in favor of a living wage in public forums – for example, public comment periods at city council meetings. Schedule rallies, media events and other activities to show public support for a living wage in your community. Publicly praise employers in your community who already pay all their workers a living wage; ask top management to speak out about the benefits of paying a living wage from an employer’s point of view.
4. Wait until you have built broad community support for a living wage before asking a decision-making body, like the city council, to vote on it. Hold individual meetings with council members to get their support before a vote is taken.
5. Be patient but persistent. If the idea of a living wage is totally new in your community, it could take many months to build enough public support to convince local officials to take the first step. Don’t give up, but pace yourselves as well. A steady flow of letters, calls, public events, and media coverage is needed. Be creative and have fun.

Helpful resources: http://www.livingwagecampaign. org; ttp://www.raisethefloor.org.