My column at Civil Beat this week looks at the issue of boosting the minimum wage (“Hawaii Monitor: Boost in Minimum Wage Is Only the First Step“).
I learned a bit talking with Jenny Lee, staff attorney and a registered lobbyist for the Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.
For the last several years, the Census Bureau has been testing a new set of supplemental poverty guidelines which take into account differences in both available benefits and necessary expenses, such as differences in housing costs.
Hawaii is one of 13 states where our poverty rate measured by the new supplemental guidelines is considerably higher than the older “official” rate, jumping to a three-year average of 17.3 percent. By these measures, Hawaii has the 9th highest percentage of residents living in poverty among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a census report published in November 2013.
“So while we don’t think of ourselves as a high poverty state, the truth is we are,” Lee said. “We have to acknowledge we are not doing enough to address the issue of poverty.”
Lee is an advocate for raising the state’s minimum wage, which she calls “a critical step.”
You can read the column at CivilBeat.com, or use this link if you don’t subscribe.
Pending bills regarding the minimum wage include the governor’s proposal (SB2828 and its House companion, HB2278), and SB3004, introduced by Donna Kim and David Ige.
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Raising the minimum wage is a symbolic step. A 2.50/hour step barely puts the minimum wage over $10.50 which is not a liveable wage esp. in Hawaii. Why we continue to stare at the minimum wage as the standard is beyond rational.
Better symbolism than nothing at all.
The vastly widening USA income gap is soon going to be a crisis of giant proportions once folks understand how executive salaries have gone out of control while wage earners have stalled out.
Rob, I have a hard time understanding your point. Are you saying minimum wage workers should not fight for anything less than your notion of a “living wage”? You are certainly welcome to do advocacy and organizing for a much higher increase. But your willingness to “pooh-pooh” the current push to hike it to $10 (or so) is rather stunning.
I assure you, it is an uphill battle to get legislators to disregard the full-press effort of the restaurant owners’ lobbyists to blow smoke about the tip credit.
Meanwhile, for the low-income workers you pretend to advocate for, a hike to $9.50 represents a 31% increase in their income. A hike to $10.10 would mean 39% more income. With the $9.50 wage, a full-time minimum wage employee would earn $4,500 more a year. With a $10.10 wage, she would $5,650 more.
Please find a way to advocate for a higher wage and more economic justice without disparaging the effort of those working hard to bring immediate relief to low-income workers.
This is much more than “symbolic.” At least for those directly impacted. If you know a shortcut to better economic justice, please share. I attended IWW meetings and Marxist study groups in my youth. I have argued politics over beer and shared utopian visions with friends while stoned on pot.
But other than organizing to fight for real practical and admittedly limited reforms, I have not stumbled upon a shortcut to the Promised Land, other than patient organizing, demanding, negotiating and (yuck!) compromising.
I’m not pooh poohing anything Bart. Just pointing out from one who lives simply so that others may simply live and has given much to communities across Hawaii nei, I recognize the extreme hardships that those who live on the margins of society deal. One of these is a propensity of business and wealthy folks to devalue the work of others. A ‘minimum’ wage will continue to be a controversial argumentative until we define ‘liveability’ as the metric not the ‘minimum.’