Increasing the minimum wage

This week, the country’s lowest-paid workers are getting their first raise in more than a decade. But in today’s economic climate, this paltry bump is not enough to sustain an individual, let alone support a family. By taking our eyes off the stagnating wages paid to service and other workers, we have shamefully created a new and growing segment of people in our society called the working poor.

For Camila Hidalgo, a single mother trying to make ends meet in Northern Virginia and one of seven million working poor in the United States, the attention surrounding this week’s minimum-wage increase is a slap in the face. Working hard at two cleaning jobs but earning a single-digit wage just above the minimum, she can barely cover rent and put food on the table and certainly can’t afford health-care coverage for herself or her children. She prays for her family’s health, not only for their wellbeing, but also because she couldn’t pay for a hospital visit or medicine if anyone got sick.

Across the country, working-poor Americans like Camila are struggling to pay for their rent, utilities, groceries and child care. Unexpected expenses such as medical bills, gas bills, car or home repairs can set them back months or years. Most worrisome is the prospect of a sudden serious illness or an accident that can leave a working-poor family without any recourse or hope. Without a living wage, low-wage earners have no escape from this vicious cycle or the ability to save for their children’s education or their own retirement. This disturbing trend is on the rise, pushing the poverty rate higher and undermining our American values about hard work and fairness.

With productivity up and the economy growing, why doesn’t the United States have a minimum wage that enables workers to provide for their families? Some conservative economists say “market demands” won’t allow for the minimum wage to actually be a sustainable, living wage. They claim the economy can’t absorb the increases and that jobs will be lost. The truth of the matter is that nearly 11 million new jobs were created after the last federal minimum-wage increase. In addition, according to the Center for American Progress, states that increased their own minimum-wage rates since then have seen strong growth in small business employment.

In any case, the debate about job creation seems to miss the larger point when you consider the astronomical rise in CEO compensation. Our healthy economy seems perfectly capable of absorbing record-high CEO salaries and bonuses that dwarf the wages of the average worker — amounting to more than 400 times their take-home pay. For an industrialized country like ours, there is no parallel to the growing income divide between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. Corporate executives in the United Kingdom, for instance, make half as much as American business leaders while the lowest-paid workers there already earn a higher wage today than their American counterparts will make in 2009.

The very existence of working poor runs counter to our country’s belief that anyone who has a job should be making enough to get by. Small steps like the minimum-wage increase barely provide a band-aid to the problem, and on its own, the increase is not the answer. If we are going to win what should be a national war on poverty, we need legislation ensuring all jobs pay what it takes to actually live on.

Mike Fishman is president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.