A full time worker earning minimum wage, which was raised from $6.55 to $7.25 in July, will make only $15,080 annually before taxes.
While faith and justice leaders applauded the recent raise, they continue to push for a higher minimum wage by next year, so workers can earn a truly just wage and pull themselves out of poverty.
A living wage is a social justice issue, and according to Father Michael Johnston, pastor of St. Henry Church in Nashville, “social justice is not optional. It’s part and parcel of our Christian faith.” That’s why, five years ago, St. Henry Church was one of 37 area congregations to make a public statement that it would pay a living wage to all its full time employees.
“All our full time employees make well above (minimum wage),” Father Johnston said. He felt it was important to sign statement “to call people to a greater awareness that people need a decent income to survive today.”
Beyond poverty wages
Middle Tennessee Jobs with Justice estimates that a living wage for two working adults with two children in Metro Nashville is $10.60 an hour. Workers who are making the current minimum wage cannot adequately cover their basic housing, food, clothing, transportation, medical and childcare expenses without relying on government or charity assistance, say labor organizers.
“A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it,” said Megan Macaraeg, director of MTJJ, echoing the motto of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a faith, community, labor and business coalition committed to raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour at the state and federal level by 2010.
Macaraeg, a local Let Justice Roll organizer, explained that current minimum wage barely keeps full time working families above the federal poverty line. For 2009, the poverty line is set at $14,520 for a household of two, and $22,050 for four. The $10 an hour living wage is “not a luxurious thing,” she said, “but enough to get you out of poverty.”
Father Steve Wolf, associate pastor at St. Henry and the leading voice among the clergy in the Diocese of Nashville on the living wage issue, recently updated his “Gospel of Life Reflection on the Living Wage.”
He sees a living wage, which he defines as “enough compensation to meet the basic human needs of one adult and one child,” as “a practical way to solve major problems of our time.”
Father Wolf is especially concerned about the “scandalous number of children growing up in poverty.” It is becoming increasingly difficult for parents to provide for their families while working one full-time job at minimum wage. “Some people caught in poverty can work their way out of it. Some people can’t. The number who cannot do so is growing,” he wrote.
“If a full time worker is not paid enough to meet basic human needs, sooner or later he or she will be visiting food pantries, applying for food stamps or welfare support, or being provided health care for which no payment can be made,” Father Wolf continues. “Somebody else is paying the cost.”
Building political will
As the Let Justice Roll campaign moves forward with its “$10 in 2010” campaign, some economists and business professionals remain wary of the new $7.25 minimum wage rate, fearing it will not help the economy as much as expected. Employers say they may have to reduce their workforce or cut back hours to pay the increased wages.
U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, however, said in a statement that the wage increase will generate an extra $5.5 billion in consumer spending over the next year.
Faith leaders in the Let Justice Roll campaign remain concerned that $7.25 an hour will still leave full time workers having to “choose between paying the rent and paying for food, paying for childcare or paying for healthcare.” In a letter to be delivered to members of the U.S. Congress this fall, they make the case for raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, stating that “an adequate minimum wage is a bedrock moral value for our nation.”
Inaugural letter signers include Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the national Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK, and Dave Robinson, executive director of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement.
In Tennessee, political leaders remain split over the living wage issue. Earlier this year, state Rep. Charles Sargent of Williamson County sponsored a bill that that would take away the ability for city and county legislative bodies to pass living wage laws, hoping to keep more jobs in Tennessee.
But the Nashville Metro Council pushed back at the state Legislature in April, and passed a resolution opposing that bill. The resolution was sponsored by at-large councilwoman Megan Barry, who plans to file a Metro living wage legislation later this year. “At the very least, we at Metro should not be paying workers a wage that keeps them working in poverty,” she said after her resolution was passed.
Sargent’s bill stalled in a House subcommittee during the last session of the Legislature on a 3-3 vote.
Macaraeg is very optimistic that Metro Nashville will soon move forward with a commitment to pay city employees a living wage.
Beyond that, her organization, Middle Tennessee Jobs with Justice, will continue to work with political leaders and community members to build momentum for a living wage among both public and private sectors.
‘Caritas in Veritate’
From the Catechism to Pope Benedict’s new encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” support for the rights of workers has long been written into the Catholic church’s social justice teachings. In Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. bishops write plainly, that “social and economic policies should foster the creation of jobs for all who can work with decent working conditions and just wages.”
As the Vatican published “Caritas in Veritate” earlier this summer, the pope was updating the statutes of the Labor Office of the Holy See, outlining the pay and benefits for Vatican employees. They are afforded pay and benefits workers and labor organizers in the U.S. could only hope for.
The starting salary for the lower-level Vatican employees is equivalent to about $1,690 a month, or about what low-wage workers in the U.S. would make if the minimum wage were raised to $10 an hour.
In addition, many employees live in Vatican-owned apartments where they pay below-market rents, can shop at the Vatican’s discount supermarket and are fully covered by the Vatican’s own health service. New mothers receive a generous maternity leave and a bonus when a new baby is born. The Vatican also has a schedule of family allowances based on total family income and the employee’s number of dependents.
Closer to home, Catholic parishes in the diocese are hoping to garner support for a living wage by their example. In St. Henry’s statement of support for a living wage, Father Johnston and Father Wolf write: “We believe that the burden of an organization’s financial difficulties should not fall to the working poor, that it is immoral to let our lowest-paid workers bear the burden of a culture’s tight finances simply because they have little power and few options, and that every enterprise, be it religious, governmental, or business, has a moral obligation to pay a living wage to every full time employee unless it is simply impossible.
“Those enterprises which are able to do so, we ask to join us in doing so. We call those enterprises which determine they are currently unable to do so to examine with courage how circumstances can be different. The so-called ‘working poor’ are our brothers and sisters, as are their children.”
© 2009 Tennessee Register
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