'Living wage' could be factor in govt contracts
Sam Hananel
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The White House is looking at a new policy that would give an advantage in bidding on government contracts to companies that offer a "living wage" and generous benefits.

But business groups opposing the idea maintain it would shut out smaller businesses from competing for more than $500 billion a year in federal contracts and increase government procurement costs.

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Raising Minimum Wage in Hard Times.

Restaurant workers are starved of benefits, report says

By Jane Black
Washington Post, Feb 11 2010
Despite the recession, the restaurant industry is thriving. Many of its workers, however, are not.

A new report from the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), a nonprofit organization that advocates better wages and work conditions for restaurant workers, revealed that 90 percent of industry staff members are not offered health insurance or sick days, 67 percent go to work sick, and 38 percent are forced to work off the clock.

Plan to Seek Use of U.S. Contracts as a Wage Lever

By Steven Greenhouse
New York Times, Feb 26 2010
The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan.

By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said.

Scroogism Wrecking America

Op-ed by Holly Sklar
McClatchy Tribune News Service, Dec 24 2009
The Scrooges of Wall Street were surprised a year ago by visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

The Ghost of Christmas Past took them back to 1973, when the poverty rate was the lowest on record. The Ghost showed them a middle-class family living the American Dream -- with decent wages and health care, a comfortable home, money to send the kids to college, and a pension to supplement Social Security.

"Bah!" said the Scrooges of Wall Street. "Humbug!"

Would cutting the minimum wage raise employment?

By Paul Krugman
New York Times Blog, Dec 16 2009
It seems that more and more Serious People (and Fox News) are rallying around the idea that if Obama really wants to create jobs, he should cut the minimum wage.

So let me repeat a point I made a number of times back when the usual suspects were declaring that FDR prolonged the Depression by raising wages: the belief that lower wages would raise overall employment rests on a fallacy of composition. In reality, reducing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually be contractionary.

Fair Wages Help Small Business

Op-ed by Kent Ross
Distributed by American Forum, Jul 23 2009
As a small business owner, I find that people expect me to grumble about the increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour as of July 24. But I’m not grumbling. In fact, I think it should be raised further.

Minimum Wage Stuck in the 1950s

Op-ed by Holly Sklar
Distributed by McClatchy Tribune News Service, Jul 23 2009
Are you better off than you were 40 years ago? Not if you're a minimum wage worker.

It would take $9.92 today to match the buying power of the minimum wage at its peak in 1968, the year Martin Luther King died fighting for living wages for sanitation workers.

Raising the Minimum Wage in Hard Times

Summary

  • The federal minimum wage was enacted during the Great Depression to promote economic recovery.
  • The long-term fall in worker buying power is one reason we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  • An America that doesn't work for working people is not an America that works.
  • Raising the minimum wage boosts consumer purchasing power and economic recovery.
  • Raising the minimum wage does not increase unemployment in good times or bad.
  • Raise the floor to lift the economy.

Holly Sklar
Jul 22 2009
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Raising Minimum Wage in Hard Times
Let Justice Roll

Raise the Minimum Wage to $10 in 2010

Summary

  • Recent minimum wage raises are too little, too late.
  • The minimum wage is a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage.
  • The minimum wage sets the wage floor. A low minimum wage institutionalizes an increasingly low-wage workforce.
  • A low minimum wage reinforces a growing gap between haves and have-nots.
  • Workers are also consumers. The long-term fall in worker buying power is one reason we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  • Raising the minimum wage lifts workers, business and the economy.
  • $10 in 2010 will break the cycle of too little, too late raises.
  • $10 in 2010 will make up ground lost in minimum wage buying power since 1968.

Holly Sklar
Jul 22 2009
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Raise the Minimum Wage to $10 in 2010
Let Justice Roll

States and Cities Minimum Wage Chart

A chart of all the states and cities with a minimum wage above the current federal minimum wage.
Jul 14 2009
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State and Cities with Minimum Wages Above Federal Level
Let Justice Roll
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With over 100 member organizations, the nonpartisan Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign is the leading faith, community, labor, business coalition committed to raising the minimum wage to a living wage at the state and federal level.