Not Just Any Job is Good Enough

As President Obama pursues caps on excessive wages for banking executives, I suggest that he insist upon even more important limits at the other end of the wage spectrum. He should use the power of the presidency to ensure living wages in the jobs resulting from his federal initiatives. At the very least, jobs produced by his initiatives should provide a living wage, basic benefits, and work-family flexibility. Anything less than this will keep American workers and their families scrambling to make ends meet, which, in turn, weakens the likelihood of a robust economic recovery.

To ensure that the jobs created as a result of federal stimulus initiatives are jobs that actually sustain and nurture American families, we need to be proactive and write specific accountability measures into legislation.

With the billions of dollars being invested in "green energy" we are creating new "jobs of the future" and also to laying the foundation for a more energy-efficient nation. With our infrastructure investments, we should also be thinking broadly and maximizing our return on investment. In gearing up to repair our nation's crumbling infrastructure, we need to create living-wage jobs to build a real recovery for working Americans and our economy as a whole. Even if legislation moves swiftly and does not include language that ensures quality jobs, Congress should phase in these standards in the second year. We should, at the very least, require that our government evaluate the quality of the jobs that are being created through our infrastructure investments.

Working Americans are in deep trouble, and that was true even before the economic downturn. Before the recession, 1 in 4 jobs in the U.S. paid less than poverty wages. Median wages continued to stagnate or drop. Well over 40 million Americans lacked health insurance. Three out of four low-wage workers had no paid sick days to take care of themselves or their families. Traditional pension plans had been replaced by 401(k)s that failed to provide real retirement security. Seniors who worked their entire lives have been left in poverty.

How can we ensure that these new 21st century infrastructure jobs incorporate basic job quality standards that provide a living wage, basic benefits and work-family flexibility? We can follow the lead of cities and states, many of which have had success in combining job quality standards with economic development. There are clear models proving that what is good for working families is good for the economy as a whole.

Increasingly, states and cities are rejecting the idea that any job creation is good job creation. Instead, they are using their clout to make different choices. No longer content to give something for nothing, they are developing family sustaining jobs for local residents by attaching job quality requirements to tax payer subsidies, contracts or procurements. At least 43 states have done this in at least one subsidy program. At least 116 state subsidy programs now use job quality standards. At the local level, many standards enacted in living wage laws apply to government contracts above a certain dollar amount. At the federal level, the Service Contract Act and the Davis Beacon Act set job requirements for government contracting.

Jobs that pay a living wage and provide basic benefits and time off clearly benefit workers and their families, but they also improve our communities and our economy. With good jobs, workers can spend more in their communities, which in turn generates more American jobs. And good jobs are also good for taxpayers. If we allow our infrastructure investment dollars to go to companies that create substandard jobs, tax payers end up subsidizing these companies twice - first when we hand over the tax dollars for the contracted work and second when our taxes pay for the social programs needed by these workers and their families (that these employers fail to provide).

The new Administration and new Congress have pledged to take a long-term approach to building a strong economy. Being strategic about the quality of jobs should be an essential part of that planning. Our new leaders say they recognize that a strong economy is dependent upon a healthy working and middle class. Building living-wage requirements into the legislation designating funds for infrastructure investments will go a long way toward moving from rhetoric to reality.

Comments

[singermuse]

What is a livable wage?
In an environment where greed is not on the rampage, a livable wage would allow a person who rents an apartment at a REASONABLE RATE (we need reasonable rent control to curtail greed and exploitation) to pay their rent, be able to eat all month without having to rely on the local food bank, buy clothes that allow them to go to work looking decently, pay for transportation, like buses or as in many places a car is NOT a luxury item (we need a decent country-wide public transport system as they have in other countries) where there is no reliable public transport (ie, california) feed and clothe their kids, and maybe even save a little. Notice I didn't say: pay for cable/satellite dish or movies or eating in restaurants or nintendo. Livable is just that, the basics.

[RightWingMarine]

I've never lived anywhere that had an unreasonable rate. When I was working my way through school I lived in a tiny apt in a horrifying neighborhood, but I found the rate reasonable. When I became more successful I moved to a better place that cost more but the rate still seemed reasonable. When going to work I pass by some houses that are better described as castles. Just for fun I looked up the MLS for that neighborhood and the price tags required two commas but it still seemed reasonable. It was and is beyond my ability to pay to live there but that doesn't make the price less reasonable.

[singermuse]

Bless you RWM, I am glad that you have had the good fortune to have been able to work and live in locations that were reasonable. Times are changing, and what people could afford 20 years ago do not exist now. Like you, I have lived in many places according to what I could afford and did the best I could with them. You sound like a person who was disciplined and willing to do whatever it took to get by when you were working your way through college. But there are a lot of people now who aren't making it no matter how hard they try. The jobs aren't there, the housing is not affordable. I know of hard working employed people living in their cars because they can't afford the rent, or the housing just isn't there. Too many good people, hard working and willing people are falling through the cracks now when they wouldn't have in the days of our youth.

[RightWingMarine]

what exactly is a living wage? Is it $50/hr? $100/hr? If we can eliminate poverty by requiring a higher min wage why not set that wage to $100/hr?

The writer laments that many jobs don't pay very well and have no health insurance and lack other benefits. There are two main points to this that the writer neglects to mention. (1) Most people employed in the very low paying jobs with no benefits are young people. Kids with their first job who cannot produce very much simply because they have no experience. The longer they work, the more experience they gain, the more valuable they become to employers and their ability to demand pay increases and benefits increases. (2) Those benefits have costs and those costs are passed on to the consumer. If the govt requires that junior employees fresh from high school be given health insurance, and time off and so forth that increases the cost to the employer and that gets passed to the consumer. Are people better off when products are expensive or when they are cheap?

The govt can require that employees be paid more but they can't require those same employees be more productive. If an employee can produce a return of $5/hr for their employer but the govt requires they be paid $7/hr, how long will that person have a job?

[dctackett]

"people employed in the very low paying jobs with no benefits are young people." Really? Did you just pull that one out of your rear, or did you pick up that idea from Fox, Limbaugh, NewsMax?

"Are people better off when products are expensive or when they are cheap?" People are better off when products are of quality and are affordable... and their fellow citizens can afford the basics of a decent life.

"The govt can require that employees be paid more but they can't require those same employees be more productive." Unproductive = Fired... the government doesn't have to require it, but it does have to regulate the side with the upper hand.

[singermuse]

I'm sorry but it is no longer true that "most" minimum/low pay jobs go to young people anymore.
We are now witnessing a major shift in the job market where the better paying jobs (here) are being moved offshore to places where they can pay people less. The race to the bottom is a very REAL and pernicious problem. The cause? Simply put, it's GREED. Companies are forfeiting the well being and very existence of workers for the sake of bigger profit margins. The changes that are being proposed in our current government are NOT a "war on the wealthy" but a redress of horrible wrongs having been committed on the working people for the last 30 plus years. "Real" wages (that is actual earning power) have gone precipitously DOWN and people are suffering. We need MORE unionization not less! We need workers to have decent pay, and a single payer health care system (like the rest of the industrialized world) that would take the burden( I am doubtful that corporations are really burdened but I'll give them the benefit of a doubt) off companies so they can (instead of pocketing the savings) pay their workers a livable wage.