Raise the Wage marches in Greensboro's 4th of July parade

Raising the minimum wage helps non-minimum wage workers...

Labor Needs to Improve Conditions for Nonunion Workers, Official Warns

by Steven Greenhouse

New York Times - June 23, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/nyregion/23workers.html

Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella group for the city's labor unions, has an unexpected and unnerving warning for New York's more than one million union members.

He warns that their wages and living standards will be threatened unless the city's unions do far more to lift the incomes and living standards of the city's nonunion working poor, including restaurant workers, supermarket cashiers and taxi drivers.

"Going forward, if we don't raise the standards for the lowest-paid workers in the city, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of them, our own levels that we achieved - of wages, pensions and time off - they're not sustainable," said Mr. Ott, whose group is a federation of 400 union locals. "For a working class that is going to be making minimum wage or slightly above, what's going to happen is that as taxpayers, that will create a social base for an attack on our own standards."

Mr. Ott's remarks, made in a recent speech at City University and in a follow-up interview, were an impassioned plea as well what he said was a "wake-up call" to the city's labor movement. New York's union movement has far more members than any other city's, although it is widely viewed as less aggressive in unionizing and helping low-wage workers than the labor movements in Los Angeles and several other cities.

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Six Reasons to Support the Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage

1. ECONOMIC GROWTH: Raising the minimum wage is a proven way for cities to improve living standards without adversely impacting the economy or business community. Santa Fe, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Albuquerque have raised their citywide minimum wage and their economies continue to thrive.

2. HUMANITARIAN VALUES: People shouldn’t have to choose between rent, groceries and medicine. Families in Greensboro have to earn more than three times the current minimum wage ($6.15/hr) just to meet the Living Income Standard.

3. DEMOCRATIC PROCESS: Communities should have the ability to decide a minimum standard for wages. Real democracy happens when ordinary people exercise control over the issues that effect their lives. The citizens initiative process enables a more direct democracy that we should engage and expand.

4. MORALITY: Everyone who works should earn a descent wage. In a community as wealthy as ours, it is morally reprehensible that working people would not have their basic needs met.

5. CONSUMER IMPACT: Raising the minimum wage to $9.82/hour would have very little effect on the costs of products and services -- no more than 1/2 a percent to 2% overall. Experience in other communities that have raised the minimum wage above the surrounding area have shown that this is easily covered by a combination of small price increases, increased productivity from happier, more stable workers, and increased sales to people with greater spending power.

6. WILL OF THE PEOPLE: Over eight thousand members of the Greensboro community have already signed on to support raising the minimum wage. Let the people’s voice be heard!

What would MLK, Jr. say?

From the Let Justice Roll campaign (full press release here):

Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers making poverty wages, he would be shocked to see millions of Americans making poverty wages today.

[. . . ]

Dr. King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968, "It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis at a full-time job getting part-time income… We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life." Dr. King said, "Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children… Now is the time for justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers at the bottom of the pay scale earned $10 an hour, adjusted for inflation.

In 1968, workers earning the federal minimum wage made an inflation-adjusted $9.70.

In 2008, forty years later, the federal minimum wage is 40 percent less, at $5.85.

"Talking about values is no substitute for valuing hardworking men and women who need a higher minimum wage," said Rev. Jennifer Kottler, Executive Director of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign. "Workers should not have to choose between paying the rent and buying food for their children. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it."

N&R column on Minimum Wage Campaign

Check out Jeri Rowe's column on the minimum wage campaign in last Saturday's paper.

It includes a concise summary of the minimum wage campaign over the past two years:

One night two weeks ago, you couldn't miss the stickers at City Hall.

At least 50 people converged on the mezzanine level of the Melvin Municipal Building, many of them wearing a small sticker that claimed a big thing for Greensboro: Raise the Minimum Wage — $9.36.

The effort involved two years of talk and a year-long petition drive that corralled 8,000 signatures. The goal: Raise the minimum wage, a dollar at a time over the next few years, until it has the same purchasing power it had in 1968, the year of the first Big Mac.

It brought together a fleet of young guns and old-school activists who wanted the city — our city — to support a move they believed would help thousands of families struggling to make it.

In December, in a 7-2 vote, the City Council gave the OK for the petition drive to move forward. Then in January, in a vote split along racial lines, council members rescinded their vote because of confusion over numbers and legality.

City Council Meeting - Tuesday, Feb. 5th - 5:30pm

Everyone concerned with the minimum wage citizens initiative petition should attend the city council meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 5th at 5:30pm. The issue will be on the agenda for further discussion.

This is our chance to reverse the decision made by the city council at its last meeting to rescind its original vote to move forward with the petition. We need to show the council members that citizens care about this issue.

Please pass the word to your networks. Anyone with questions should call Marilyn @ 456-1309, Jim @ 681-2890, Fahiym @ 987-4029, Ed @ 549-7810 or Debra @ 987-7689.

Final final push

This just came from Marilyn Baird, co-chair of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee:

Last night at the City Council meeting, Mary Rakestraw made a motion to rescind the previous vote to accept the minimum wage petition. It passed by a vote of 5-3. Robbie Perkins was not at the meeting because he was hospitalized. We had heard a couple of weeks ago that Mike Barber was trying to solicit a councilperson to make a motion to rescind. Mary Rakestraw agreed to do just that.

On 1/8/2008 four (4) members of the minimum wage committee met with City Attorney Terry Woods. We were advised that over 2,000 signatures weren't valid and that we had ten (10) days to get the required signatures. The ten days would be up on Friday, January 18th at 5:00pm. This was stated to us verbally as well as in writing.

We cannot let this stop us!!

Here's the plan:

1. Continue to get signatures!! If you have petitions that need to be notarized a notary will be available at Faith Community Church tomorrow from 3p-7p. If you have a petition that needs to be picked up, please call us at 456-1309.

2. Rep. Alma Adams is in support and feels we need to move forward. We'll be at Bennett College tomorrow starting at 10am. We'll be there all day.

If you can help us at Bennett please call Debra Compton-Holt at 987-7869.

If you have any questions or suggestions please call us:
Marilyn @ 456-1309
Jim @ 681-2890
Ed @ 549-7810
Fahiym @ 987-4029