The Living Wage Movement: Building a Political Link from Market Wages to Social Institutions
The living wage is an idea that is at the heart of a new political strategy to raise real wages in the United States. It is focused on those workers who have been left behind in the economic boom of the 1990s. The sales, clerical, operative, and service jobs in the service-producing economy have had stagnant or falling wages. These jobs are often filled by a predominantly female and disproportionately minority work force. In many metropolitan areas, trade unions and their allies are working to get living wage ordinances passed. The living wage movement has grown out of recent trade union organizing and welfare reform resistance movements. Generally, these groups argue that there is a "wage gap" between the wages typically paid to semiskilled and unskilled workers in a service-based economy and the basic-self-sufficient or unsubsidized-income required to provide for a family. There are, at least, three political reasons for the appearance of the living wage campaigns. First, real wages and salaries for many workers have been stagnant as real per capita income has risen. Second, many municipalities are outsourcing work done in the past by civil servants. The wages paid by private contractors are usually perceived to be lower and the benefit packages weaker than that which would have been provided by the metropolitan government. Third, service sector wages are perceived to be low relative to factory jobs. The living wage movement is part of a general effort to boost the income that comes from service-producing employment. The living wage is usually defined as a self-sufficiency income, i.e., the level of income necessary for a given family type to become independent of welfare or other