“The Living Wage Solution” Transcript
Jose Morales was sleeping on cardboard boxes in a garage in Compton, California. Before the sun came
up, he would walk to a nearby bus stop, where he would ride the bus for two hours to the Los Angeles
International Airport, where he worked as a janitor.
On two occasions, he was mugged while waiting for the bus. Working 40 hours a week for minimum
wage, this was the best he could do. But then Jose’s situation improved drastically.
As Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, reports, Jose received health
insurance and a 36 percent raise. He had enough to rent his own apartment and to buy a car. It all
happened because Jose started to receive the living wage.
What is a living wage, you ask? Well, it’s not the same as the minimum wage. The minimum wage is set
by Congress and is the same in every part of the country. The living wage goes beyond the minimum
wage.
So what can we do? How can we help make sure that people who work full-time earn enough money to
lift themselves and their families above poverty level?
One way is to implement a federally mandated living wage. The first city in America to institute a living
wage was Baltimore, in 1994. Since then, the living-wage movement has spread to more than 140
jurisdictions. However, as David Neumark, Matthew Thompson, and Leslie Koyle reported in the 2012
issue of the Journal of Labor Policy, most living-wage laws cover only people who work for companies
with government contracts. At best only 1 percent of workers in a city receive the living wage. It’s time
to cover everyone who works full time-and to do so with a national living-wage law.