Economic justice
activists are championing laws that shift the costs of toxic poverty wages from
communities to corporations.
Imagine if a corporation set up shop in your community and immediately dumped toxic sludge in your local waterways and buried radioactive waste next to your biggest playground.
You and your neighbors, I bet, would demand full compensation from that corporation to pay for the clean-up and public health costs.
You’d have a strong case.
What about corporations that
pollute communities not with chemicals, but with poverty wages? The impact can
be every bit as toxic, and yet companies that pay low wages get off scot-free.
In fact, their CEOs usually get bonuses.
Economic justice activists
across the country are fighting back against this outrage. They’re demanding
that corporate polluters pay a price for low wages.
In the Chicago area, for instance, Cook County commissioners are considering a bill that would slap fees on corporations employing more than 750 workers at less than the local living wage — currently $14.57 per hour, or $11.66 with health benefits.
Under this proposed Responsible
Business Act, companies would pay the local government $750 per
employee each year for every dollar their wages fall below the living wage. The
bill would generate an estimated $580 million in the first four years.
Community stakeholders would get
a voice in deciding how to spend this revenue to help low-income residents. For
example, some of that money might boost health care options, pre-trial
services, and housing assistance.
Why not just raise the minimum
wage? In an ideal world, it would be the best solution. That’s why “Fight for $15“ campaigns
are catching on. Unfortunately, the vast majority of
Americans still live in places where wages won’t lift working
families out of poverty anytime soon.
Low-wage employer fees provide a
good alternative by targeting the large corporations that can afford to pay
their workers more, but are choosing to drive low-wage pollution instead. This
approach encourages these companies to raise wages while leveling the playing
field for the businesses that are already taking the high road.
As long as poverty wages persist,
we’ll all pay the price.
Poverty wages leave workers with
too little buying power. Local businesses suffer when local people can’t afford
to buy their products and services.
And young people suffer, too.
Researchers have linked high poverty rates to lower educational achievement and poor health. And poverty
wages make high poverty rates inevitable.
Low-income people, especially in
communities of color, also face a far greater risk of being arrested and jailed for
minor offenses, leaving them with even higher barriers to future economic
opportunities.
Who subsidizes these poisonous
poverty wages? Taxpayers.
To keep their families healthy
and safe, low-wage workers have little choice but to turn topublic assistance programs. Reforms like Cook County’s
Responsible Business Act could help us recoup some of these costs.
Large corporations are
“socializing labor costs,” sums up Will Tanzman of IIRON, the Illinois-based economic and social justice
organization that’s part of a growing movement for the Responsible Business
Act.
One local poll, he points out, shows county residents favoring
the bill by a 2-1 margin.
Connecticut activists pushed a similar bill last year. A new law in that state mandates the
creation of an advisory board where workers will join employers, public
assistance recipients, elected officials, and other stakeholders to develop
recommendations for how the governor and state legislators can address the
public cost of low-wage work.
Activists and elected officials
elsewhere, including Colorado and New York, are also exploring the possibility
of applying low-wage employer fees.
These campaigns aren’t about
demonizing public assistance. In the richest country in the world, we should
have a safety net strong enough to ensure that all our most vulnerable people
live in dignity. That ought to be a matter of national pride.
But a system that lets overpaid
CEOs underpay workers and then get taxpayers to foot the bill for the damage
that results? None of us can take any pride in that.
Liz Ryan Murray is the
National People’s Action policy director. Distributed by OtherWords.org and
cross-posted at Inequality.org