Union News

Fighting for Living Wages

April 23, 2009 <!–csalafia–>

Nobody in America who works full time should live in poverty. However, the fact is as of April 2007 over 37 million people, more than the population of the State of California, do. According to recent US Census figures, 5 million more people are poor today that were not in 2000. Nearly 8 million live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty where at least 40% of the residents are poor.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is that over 25% of all full time workers do not make enough to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold. The Federal Minimum Wage is an idea whose time has come and gone. The time has come to replace the Federal Minimum Wage with locally derived living wage standards.

Thinking globally, a salary of $40,000/year or more puts one in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. Here in the US, however, that income will put you nearly $10,000 below the US median income. The root question is why are more people falling into poverty in the wealthiest country in the world? One of the biggest reasons for this is that wages in the United States have remained essentially stagnant for the last 30 years. Yet inflation, in terms of the increase in the cost of living, has increased 3% per year, on average, over the same time period. In addition, the real value, adjusted for inflation, has decreased over 25% since 1967.

Read the rest at the link above