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Real Welfare Reform Would Have Enacted
Living Wage Laws.
Printed in the Westerly Sun, 6 May '02
Do you ever hear it argued that welfare goes straight to the pockets of lazy people? Consider this: more than one-third of all jobs in Connecticut pay wages so low that a worker cannot support a family by working full-time. The recent upsurge in homelessness in CT includes many working people, who simply cannot pay for housing without state assistance. The current minimum wage of $6.70 works out to less than one-third of what is needed to provide food, shelter, child care and transportation to and from work for a family of four, known as a Living Wage, in New London County (see
www.epinet.org or www.nationalpriorities.org).
Nationally-owned hotel and restaurant chains and other large businesses have no excuse for paying sub-poverty level wages. In addition to taking profits out of the region, chains often drive out small, locally-owned businesses. Then we pay, with our taxes, to subsidize these companies, by providing the social services to keep low-wage workers alive. Shouldn't the companies getting the 40 hours of work from employees be responsible for their income? In most industries, raising wages to a Living Wage has a very small (1-2%) impact on profits. Our communities deserve that much from them (especially from those which have received explicit tax breaks from the state already!)
We also wind up bearing the exorbitant cost of prisons and incarceration when a desperate few give up on our economic system and resort to crime, and we become crime victims. Tourism-related business, additionally, brings an increased tax burden to maintain roads, water and sewer services for the influx of tourists, which, again, means the community is subsidizing big business.
Living Wage legislation would benefit Connecticut in many ways. When lower-income people are paid higher wages, they spend the money - and they spend it locally, keeping it in the community. They also have better morale at work, and miss fewer days (largely because they can afford reliable childcare). We should ensure that those businesses which can pay a Living Wage do so. There are currently more than 80 Living Wage policies in effect in the nation which give proof of the benefits of their enactment (see
www.acorn.org).
Is welfare going to lazy people, or is it going to the large companies we subsidize? It is time to demand Living Wages in Connecticut.
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