As of Wednesday, January 1st, 2014, Oregon’s minimum wage will have gone up 15% to $9.10 per hour. This means that an average minimum wage employee working 40 hours per week will earn just under $19,000 annually, squeaking just under the national poverty threshold for a family of three. Oregon is among a handful of states whose wage is tied directly to inflation. Since a 2002 ballot measure, Oregon’s lowest paid employees can expect their buying power to rise with the cost of products and services. In tying the minimum wage to the rate of inflation, Oregon is considered by many (along with Washington) to be a leader among US states when it comes to wage equity.
In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama called on the Federal Government to address the growing inequity in the United States economic system. For the first time in American history class movement is becoming stagnant, and with the top 1% of earners in the United States owning an estimated 24% of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 80% of earners shared just 11% of the national GDP, the president stressed that without change America’s economic engine--driven by a once-strong and now-disappearing--middle class, would continue to struggle.
By the middle of the year Senator Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) and Representative George Miller (D, California), sponsored the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 (FMWA). Based on the poverty threshold for a family of 4, and the idea that the buying power of any worker should rise with the cost of the goods and services they need to support their families. Perhaps more revolutionary even, is the idea that if the economy is growing, so too should the income of the low and middle earners.
For a nation whose collective dream is one of hard work leading to reward, the social and financial pressures that have been slowly squeezing the middle and working classes since the late 1970’s have reached what feels to many like a long endless plateau. Jobs are scarce and debt is high. Companies balk at increasing median wages, and Congressional Republicans hammer away at the benefits provided to the jobless while working hard to protect big business subsidies in the fields of agriculture, oil production and more. With production industries slowing and the service industry growing, many people across the nation are forced to take tip-based jobs. Jobs where the national minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. Outside of states like Oregon, Washington, California and (oddly enough) Alaska which legally require tipped employees to be paid the same minimum wage as other employees, these employees are expected to make ends meet by earning good tips.
Officially our economy has been in solid recovery since 2009. But with jobless numbers maintaining, and almost 60% of the jobs “regained” with the economic boost being minimum wage service industry jobs---not the middle class white-collar jobs that were lost--it can sometimes feel like the economic recovery has only been a recovery for the most well to-do Americans. Many continue to live paycheck to paycheck, without vacation, sick or even parental leave.
Unfortunately the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 was dead on arrival in a Congressional House whose main legislative goals in 2013 seemed to be to drag their feet and work tirelessly to prevent any legislation sponsored by democrats, or supported by the president, from ever seeing the light of day.
That said, the State of Washington approved a ballot measure ensuring that employees at the Seattle International Airport would earn a minimum of $15.00 an hour. Allowing them to live reasonably, despite the high cost of housing and basics in the area. Proving that individual states, or even individual cities--as Portland did in requiring all employers to provide leave for employees who are ill.
Most Americans are not millionaires. And most Americans will never be millionaires. Maybe it’s time we remembered that and started looking at wage and employment law not as something that will be problematic for us when we own a fortune 500 and are trying our darndest to leech every penny we can into corporate pockets, but instead as a needed defense of the American Middle class, because after all--that’s always been the dream. To work hard, and have that hard work earn you enough to buy a house and raise a family well.
Sources include:
The Oregonian
US Dept. of Health and Human Services
Full text of the 2013 Fair Minimum Wage Act
The Article “Who Rules America” by Prof. William Domhoff, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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