When work doesn't pay

So much for the myth that hard work pays off in "moving on up" options.

It’s Getting Harder To Move Beyond A Minimum-Wage Job
By Ben Casselman

Minimum-wage jobs are meant to be the first rung on a career ladder, a chance for entry-level workers to prove themselves before earning a promotion or moving on to other, better-paying jobs. But a growing number of Americans are getting stuck on that first rung for years, if they ever move up at all.

Anthony Kemp is one of them. In 2006, he took a job as a cook at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Oak Park, Illinois. The job paid the state minimum wage, $6.50 an hour at the time, but Kemp figured he could work his way up. “Normally, a good cook would make $14, $15, $17 an hour,” Kemp said. “I thought that of course I’d make a better wage.”

Continue reading here.

Wage justice

Years ago, I taped a Pogo cartoon strip on my office door. 

One cute character said to another, "The solution to poverty is monies." 

Surely a true statement. 

Poor people need money.  They need money from the jobs at which they work hard. 

They need money for work gloves.

City leaders remain reluctant to impose a living wage (of sorts) on contractors who provide services such as garbage collection and landscaping.

When I heard the news that the Dallas City Council wasn't going to push forward improvements in the wage situation of hard working sanitation workers, among others, I began to calculate what my own out-of-pocket costs would be weekly to my trash team.  I know one thing, I couldn't do without them. 

I do know that a concern of some city council members and our mayor has to do with verifying that the increase wages would actually go to those who do the work and not to the contracting companies.

But, there are ways to ensure integrity, like "certified payroll" processes that all federal grant recipients have learned to deal with .  Or, possibly we could create an office of labor credit that rewarded workers who produced proof of having worked for companies contracting with the city. 

I know it's complicated.  And, I trust our leaders.

But, the fact remains. 

People need monies to live and to thrive. 

Monies invested in people is always best. 

Capital and wages

CEO of major U. S. company "gets it" thanks to Piketty! 

Read all about it here. 

Bravo, Judge Jenkins!

I love our County Judge, Clay Jenkins! 

Take a quick look!

Minimum wage and cities

U.S. labor secretary urges mayors descending on Dallas to pass resolution supporting minimum wage hike

 

            

 

The U.S. Conference of Mayors kicks off tomorrow morning at 6:30 with a continental breakfast on the Continental Bridge, and will include some after-work-hours performances by the likes of Lyle Lovett, Leann Rimes, Asleep at the Wheel, Marcia Ball, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lonely Boys — even “a special performance by Kool and the Gang,” says Dallas City Hall, like there’s any other kind. And: Kareem! But as you can see from the jam-packed program, there’s also work to be done, and that includes wading through 117 resolutions — everything from creating an International Jazz Day to commemorating the 40th anniversary of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Somewhere in the middle of Resolution No. 67, its title “In Support of Raising the Federal Minimum Wage” from its current rate of $7.25 an hour. The mayors’ resolution is asking for an increase to $10.10 an hour and says it “supports state and local government efforts to set their own minimum wages above the federal minimum wage to help its lowest paid workers keep pace with the rising cost of living.” It was submitted by 16 mayors, among them Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, New York City’s Bill deBlasio, Seattle’s Ed Murray and Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti.

Read the entire article here. 

A Seattle Model on Wages

[The story of how Seattle put in place a plan to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour provides much to consider.  What follows is a good report from Think Progress.  Reactions invited!]

How A Millionaire, A Socialist, And Some Taco Bell Workers Brought A Living Wage To Seattle

By Alan Pyke   

When Mayor Ed Murray (D) signed a bill that gradually raises Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour on Tuesday, his choice of location seemed to reflect the complex and cooperative process that produced the document he was signing.

Rather than City Hall, Murray chose to hold the signing ceremony in Cal Anderson Park, which was the starting point for some of the many rallies that activists from groups, like 15 Now, organized over the past year. A ballplayer with a good arm would have no trouble throwing a rock from the park’s northwest corner into Dick’s Drive-In, a local Seattle burger chain. The south end of the park looks onto a multi-block stretch of bars and restaurants that has exploded with development and commerce in the past few years. Business interests like these played an essential role in crafting the aggressive-but-thoughtful law that Murray signed in that park on Tuesday.

And just a couple hundred feet west of the park sits Seattle Central Community College, a hub of Occupy Seattle activity and the trampoline from which Socialist Kshama Sawant launched her successful city council campaign.

It took a year of activist pressure, a worker-dominated election cycle that put a socialist on the city council, and several months of hard negotiating across ideological lines, but the new law will raise Seattle workers’ standard of living dramatically over the coming years. Some things about that process may be unique to Seattle, and replicating the exact recipe the city’s labor, business, and political communities used might be impossible. But interviews with some of the most prominent participants reveal that the key ingredients for a $15 minimum wage are completely portable, and could soon come to a city near you.

A Confluence Of Pressure

On the evening of May 29, 2013, Taco Bell and Burger King night shift workers walked off the job, forcing a pair of stores to close. They were joined the next morning by dozens more workers from other chain restaurants in other neighborhoods around the city, who planned to converge in the late morning — near Cal Anderson Park, of course — and march together a little more than a mile west to Denny Park for an afternoon rally. A local progressive activist called it “a powerful kickoff” for a movement that didn’t yet know what shape it would take.

Read the entire article here.

 

Workers lagging behind. . .millions can't "make ends meet"

Low wage workers and raising the minimum wage

In 2013, CitySquare worked alongside over 50,000 different individuals.  The vast majority of these neighbors, who worked, earned less that the amount needed to make life work--or as we say, "make ends meet."

A large part of the challenge relates to wage levels.  Unskilled workers must settle for minimum wage pay ($7.25 an hour).  That's just not enough.

Currently, a national discussion is underway again about the pros and cons of raising the national minimum wage to $10.15 an hour.  That would help lift a large number of "sinking ships."

Of course, whenever the issue of increasing the minimum wage standard comes up, critics emerge warning that raising the wage level would force people out of employment, curtail job creation and hurt business, especially small businesses.  In spite of the fact that every serious study over the years debunks and discredits these notions, the argument persists.

The experience of Washington State and of Seattle provides a refreshing backdrop for understanding the economic impact associated with raising the minimum wage.

Check this out!

Reactions encouraged.

Cutting poverty today!

Who benefits from minimum wage increase?

Interesting article from The Wall Street Journal on the benefit distribution of an increase in the minimum wage.

Prayer list. . .

Here's my first prayer list for the first Sunday of 2014:

• Minimum wage adjustment so that people who work can live above poverty line
• Comprehensive immigration reform so that thousands of my neighbors can receive documentation needed to remain in the US "legally"
• Housing for thousands of homeless persons living on Dallas streets on this cold, cold morning
• Aggressive/progressive city policy to incent developers to build needed permanent supportive housing units in our city
• The children who will go back to school tomorrow--that their  educational experience would be adequate for their coming lives
• Churches in Dallas to "connect the dots" between the Christian message and God's love for the world and the poor
• Strength to live life with less talk and more action
• Justice in the US economy and in the Dallas expression of same
• Those left out, left behind and kicked to the side to know their real status in the heart of God
• Mercy, Lord, mercy