Abstract

Minimum Security

Over the past ten years leading up to 2004, a host of scrappy grassroots campaigns across the country have successfully pushed through living-wage ordinances in 112 cities and counties. Yet the federal minimum wage remains stalled for the eighth year in a row at $5.15 an hour--a shocking $10,712 annually for fifty-two weeks of full-time work. Local living-wage laws may have moral power, but they are limited in actual scope. Early living-wage efforts pegged the wage rate around a modest $7.50 an hour and raised the pay of a relatively small number of workers--those employed by companies holding contracts with a city or that receive municipal subsidies. That next step is a push for minimum-wage laws that affect all (or most) low-wage workers in a given city. The movement has gone on the offensive in some states, where activists are pushing to raise the state minimum above the paltry federal level.