Opinion

Tax dollars should support living wages

In the 13 states that boosted their minimum wages at the beginning of 2014, the number of jobs grew an average of 0.85 percent from January through June. In October 2014, supporters of raising the minimum wage rallied outside a gubernatorial debate. In November, Illinois voters approved an advisory referendum that called for the state’s minimum wage to increase to $10 per hour. less In the 13 states that boosted their minimum wages at the beginning of 2014, the number of jobs grew an average of 0.85 percent from January through June. In October 2014, supporters of raising the minimum wage ... more Photo: Seth Perlman /Associated Press Photo: Seth Perlman /Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Tax dollars should support living wages 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

As the country celebrates the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we are reminded that much of his work focused on wages, the rights of workers and other economic opportunities.

The “March in Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” where King delivered his most famous speech, had its origins in organized labor seeking to advance a broad agenda for economic justice. King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, standing with sanitation workers fighting for their right to a safe job with good pay.

We must retrieve once again the moral claims of that legacy lest we make a caricature of the civil rights leaders and the movement for which they gave their lives.

COPS/Metro, a broad-based organization of congregations, schools and unions, has launched a campaign to raise wages for those directly or indirectly employed by the City of San Antonio and Bexar County. The concept of paying workers enough to make a dignified living is deeply rooted in our religious, political, and market traditions.

Most religious traditions call us to provide everyone in the community the wherewithal for a dignified life and especially to strengthen the hand of the poor. The Catechism of the Catholic Church places the obligation to pay just wages squarely in its interpretation of the commandment against stealing: “A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice,” (P. 2434).

Shared prosperity is woven into the fabric of our American political tradition. President Lincoln spoke of the right of men to enjoy the economic fruits of their labor. He found slavery repugnant partly because slaves were not paid for their labors, an injustice he could relate to; his own father “rented him out” as a young man and kept all the wages. Lincoln believed that government ought to actively create a path toward economic opportunity and upward mobility.

Lesser known is the market tradition’s argument for living wages. In “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith argued that “a man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family.”

Smith’s concern about poverty was not limited to physical privation. It was also about public participation in the life of community — he considered a “necessity” that which would allow one to appear, and to act, in public without shame.

Raising wages is good economic policy. The Associated Press recently reported that in the 13 states that boosted their minimum wages at the beginning of 2014, the number of jobs grew an average of 0.85 percent from January through June. The average for the other 37 states was 0.61 percent (Christopher Rugaber, AP, July 2014). Furthermore, evidence shows that a low-wage strategy is not necessarily a low-cost strategy, as better wages tend to result in higher productivity and lower employee turnover.

A living wage is the income necessary to meet the most basic needs of a family without depending on public subsidies such as public housing or food stamps, and without having to rely on private or informal assistance, such as food banks or shared housing.

In the San Antonio-New Braunfels area, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP), a basic budget for a family of three (one adult and two children) requires a total income of $17.15 per hour, 40 hours a week. CPPP estimates that 56.1 percent of these families cannot afford these expenses, let alone save for college or emergencies. A family of four (two adults and two children) requires $19.66 per hour to meet basic needs; 19.1 percent of these families make less than this living wage.

COPS/Metro leaders believe that our public sector should lead the way in raising the wages in San Antonio. Our local governmental entities, which include public colleges and universities, school districts, and hospitals, can and must create a path for an economy of shared prosperity by establishing the following strategies:

Compensate direct employees, full- and part-time, enough so that they are not dependent on public assistance.

The current wage floor at the city is set at 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) for a family of four, or $11.47/hour; the county’s is $11.67. And yet a household wage of $14.91 per hour or less qualifies them for food stamps.

We recommend a phased-in process to a new wage floor of no less than 130 percent of FPL for a family of four, or $14.91 per hour. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and commissioners have given preliminary approval to a plan raising the wage floor to $13 per hour for the upcoming fiscal year as an initial step. The final decision is expected this January, and we urge the commissioners to approve the raise.

Set a wage floor for outsourced and subcontracted service jobs at least at par with direct employees. Janitorial, cafeteria, maintenance and security jobs are some of the positions that the city and county outsource, often turning good public sector jobs into minimum-wage jobs with no benefits.

We recommend that all future requests for proposals (RFPs) entailing service jobs require wages of at least the current wage floor for direct employees (construction jobs are currently paid under the federal Davis-Bacon Act pay scale).

Require that all businesses applying for tax incentives of any kind abide by the current cconomic development guidelines regarding wages.

The city and county have had robust rules in place regarding tax abatements, a result of COPS/Metro’s organizing years ago. However, the creation of “Chapter 380/381 Economic Agreements” of the Texas Local Government Code allows cities and counties to provide certain grants that fall outside the original rules. Following COPS/Metro’s recommendation, the city’s Economic Development Department amended the rules to close this loophole and the city council approved the changes last month. We urge the county to follow suit.

Everyone working a full-time job ought to be able to raise a family with dignity and opportunity, and not be dependent on public assistance. As taxpayers, we insist that our public resources be used to foster shared prosperity and not to perpetuate poverty.

We are encouraged by the initial response by the city and county, and by the public support of this agenda by all three current candidates for mayor at the COPS/Metro Assembly this past November.

We ask the community of San Antonio to join us in this campaign to stand with the workers who toil every day to serve us and yet find themselves unable to make ends meet.

The Rev. Martin Luther King said it best in his last speech: “It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

Let’s honor his life and legacy by addressing this economic and moral contradiction now.