Asheville Citizen-Times
| July 16, 2006
Section: News Edition: FINAL Page: 1A LESLIE BOYD STAFF STORY |
| By Leslie Boyd LBOYD@CITIZEN-TIMES.COM L LEICESTER -- Suzanne Ladd dreads payday."I know that sounds a little strange," she says. "But my paycheck's more than gone before I get it." Ladd makes about $8 an hour driving a van for Mountain Mobility -- almost $2 an hour more than the state's new minimum wage, $6.15 per hour, recently approved by the General Assembly. The previous rate was the federal minimum of $5.15. The federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in nine years, and several states and cities have moved on their own to raise the minimum or to pass "living wage" ordinances, which require any business contracting with the government to pay a certain wage to workers. Some also require businesses to offer health insurance. More than 135 city and county governments across the country have enacted living wage ordinances. More than 20 states and several cities have passed minimum wage laws, but most of those still don't meet the basic expenses of families. "This is a good first step," said Sorien Schmidt, legislative director of The N.C. Justice Center. "But it's only a first step. We have a long way to go. ... As a country, our goal should be that people be able to find work at a salary high enough to meet their basic needs." Advocates say living wage ordinances will reverse the downward trend in wages for low-wage earners. Wages for the lowest-paid 10 percent of workers fell 9.3 percent between 1979 and 1999, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think-tank. The number of jobs, in which wages were below what a worker would need to support a family of four above the poverty line, also grew between 1979 and 1999, according to EPI. In 1999, 26.8 percent of the workforce earned poverty-level wages, an increase from 23.7 percent in 1979. Paul Sonn of the Brennan Center Economic Justice Project at New York University, said North Carolina's move is part of a long-term process of restoring the minimum wage to the value it had 35 years ago. Sonn said if the federal government had kept pace with inflation, minimum wage would be about $9 now and in real value is 42 percent less than it was in 1968. "I think over the next 10 years we'll see it restored," he said. Local push With the new minimum wage law, about 139,000 people in North Carolina will get a raise, said John Quinterno of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center, which is part of the N.C. Justice Center. And although that dollar an hour won't bring people up to a living wage, it is enough over the course of a year to pay for about four months' groceries for a family of four. "People making minimum wage are not the people we think they are," Quinterno said. "Three-quarters of them are over 20 and fully half of them are over 25. Sixty percent of them are women. This isn't about giving teenagers more money to buy CDs." In Buncombe County, the Living Income Standard, which is calculated by adding together monthly expenses, is about $13 an hour for a one-parent, one-child household. Locally, the Asheville-Buncombe Living Wage Coalition is working on getting a living wage ordinance passed. The group hopes to present a proposed ordinance to Asheville City Council this fall. "We're trying to reach out and educate people about the issue because people can make a lot more than minimum wage and still not be able to make ends meet," said Tyrone Greenlee, co-director of Christians for a United Community and a member of the Living Wage Coalition steering committee. "I don't know if people realize how much we have to subsidize people of low income just so that they can have the basics. This is about dignity and having enough and being at the table." Figures from the Buncombe County Department of Social Services show what these subsidies cost taxpayers per hour, per beneficiary, when wages don't cover expenses. Food stamps, $1.45; Medicaid, $3.71 (the portion of a wage that a person might expect to pay for health insurance); emergency assistance for heating and other necessities, $1.46; child support, $1.27 and childcare, $2 to about $4.50. "What that means is that we subsidize businesses that don't pay a living wage with our tax money," Schmidt said. Helping stay afloat Ladd said she would love the dignity of not having to ask for help. She has two children living at home and makes about $1,400 a month before taxes. The rent on her single-wide mobile home is $550 a month, her power bill is over $100 a month, and even with food stamps, she spends more than $150 a month out-of-pocket and her childcare expenses come to about $150 a month even though she gets a childcare subsidy. She also has a car payment (she drives a 1994 Saturn) and her two growing children need shoes and clothing. "You know what vacation means to me now?" she said. "It's nothing more than a word I learned to spell at school." With gas at $3 a gallon, she and her children rarely go out for day trips, and they never eat out or go to the movies. Her son, Dusty, turned 9 on June 11, and she finally got him the gift she had promised last week -- nearly a month late. "Something else will have to wait," she said. "It's real depressing. I'm a month behind on my rent and I just don't have it. ... I hate not being able to pay my bills." Several months ago, Ladd applied for a rent subsidy from the federal government, but has heard nothing. "They said I'd have to wait at least six months," she said. "These things are slow." People with low income often are enticed to borrow money, but Ladd tries not to fall into that trap. "Borrowing money only makes things worse," she says. "It has to be repaid, with interest. My credit rating is nonexistent anyway. I try to build it up, but I just can't keep up, let alone get ahead." The help of a number of local agencies and charities has kept Ladd afloat -- barely. Eblen Charities has paid a power bill or two; Hearts With Hands bought a tank of home heating oil last winter and has given her food after the food stamps and the money ran out; Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry also has helped her. "I don't know how much longer I can do this," Ladd said. "It's exhausting. It's depressing." Quinterno and others agree that the hike in minimum wage is something to be celebrated, but more needs to be done to help all people of low income make ends meet. "The question is, what happens next?" he said. "This can't be the only thing we do." Dawn of a new wage? Read about what a living wage statute would mean in Asheville at CITIZEN-TIMES.com. MINIMUM WAGE VS. LIVING WAGE The federal minimum wage is the minimum amount that a worker can be paid an hour (currently $5.15) and applies to almost all workers. States may also set a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum. *Living wages commonly refer to wages set by local ordinances that cover a specific set of workers, usually government workers or workers hired by businesses that have received a government contract or subsidy. Economic Policy Institute JOHN COUTLAKIS/JCOUTLAKIS@CITIZEN-TIMES.COM Suzanne Ladd makes $8 an hour, but it still isn't enough to make ends meet. She's constantly juggling to try and keep up. Suzanne and her children Dusty, 9, and Destiny, 6, enjoy playing with the family dog "Bear" in the front yard. WAGE: Advocates say ordinance is about 'dignity' EWART BALL/EBALL@CITIZEN-TIMES.COM Tyrone Greenlee speaks at the Living Wage press conference on the steps of City Hall in Asheville last May. "I don't know if people realize how much we have to subsidize people of low income just so that they can have the basics," he said. *Suzanne Ladd's annual income at $8.04 per hour, assuming a 40-hour workweek: $16,732. *Living Income Standard calculated by the N.C. Budget & Tax Center (family of three): $35,484. *Federal poverty level for a family of three: $14,824. *To learn more about city and county efforts to raise wages for low-income workers, visit www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/minimumwage-policybrief.pdf *To learn more about living wage and the effect of low-income jobs on the state's economy, visit www.ncjustice.org/media/library/551_livingincome2005.pdf and www.ncjustice.org/media/library/656_wpfp2006.pdf *To learn more about the Asheville-Buncombe Living Wage coalition, visit www.ashevillelivingwage.org. |
 |
|
Copyright (c) Asheville Citizen-Times. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc. |