Its been almost a decade the living movement has gained momentum aimed at increasing the minimum wage to levels thought to be sufficient to support a family of four above the poverty level. Its proponents believe that the current federally mandated minimum wage does not meet their objective. The Association of Community Organizations Reform Now (ACRON) leads the movement.

The Santa Cruz City Council enacted the nation’s highest living wage in October 2000. Over there the law requires that city employees and employees of city contractors be paid at least $11 and hour if they get health benefits, and $12 an hour if they do not get any health benefits. Inasmuch as of early 2001, more than 50 jurisdictions had legislated living wage ordinances and another 75 or so had further living wage campaigns. The living wage movement is attempting, originally by way of local laws, to accomplish economic justice for low wage workers by pressing that businesses which have public contracts with local government compensate their workers wages high enough to uphold their families. The living wage movement is made up of matrix local alliances of community groups, labor organizations, and interfaith religious organizations. The living wage movement is constructed on an identification that the present federal minimum wage does not contribute enough for an individual to live on, often less an individual with a family. Living wage laws replace the low federal minimum with local laws pressing workers to be paid a fair living wage.

For over a hundred years or so, the religious factions have advocated the living wage movement in one-way or the other, most auspiciously. Numerous religious groups have gone on record to uphold the right of workers to living wages, including the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Methodist Church. Religious reformers were the first group to call for a living wage Outside of the labor movement, starting with Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter to the Catholic bishops of the world entitled "On the Condition of Labor" which recognized the right of every worker to get wages adequate to provide for a family. Pope John Paul II indicated in 1981, that payment of living wages was a precise criterion for deciding the legitimacy of the entire economic system. "Hence in every case a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the whole socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is functioning justly. It is not the only means of checking, but it is a particularly important one and in a sense the key means" (John Paul II, 1981). One of the primary reasons outlined for the local living wage movement is that the federal minimum wage has failed to provide workers with sufficient wages to support themselves and their families.

The present federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour went into efficacy on September 1, 1997. If the minimum wage was adjusted to allow it to retain its 1968 value, according to a 2001 report of the Congressional Research Service, it would be about $7.72 per hour. The dilemma with the federal minimum wage is that it was too low to start with, it is not ordered for inflation, and it can only be elevated by an act of congress. Contemporary estimates recommend that the present minimum wage is not only thirty percent less in real value than the minimum wage was in 1968, further that the economy has become fifty percent more productive since then and low-wage workers have not shared in that competency. To answer as to how people need living wages, one must look at how many people earn minimum wages now. If the minimum wage were raised at once in early 2001 by $1.50 an hour, 11.9 million workers, or 9.9% of the workforce would see an elevation in wages. In spite of the widespread wisdom that only teenagers and part-time employees work for minimum wages, 68.2% of the workers influenced would be over 20 years old and close to half, 45.3% of the workers, would be regular employees. The preponderance of the influenced workers would be women, 60.6%, and African American and Hispanic workers would superfluously gain.

By reason of the official poverty doorsill is so low, supporters for the working poor frequently look to the food stamp prescriptions for a more practical income to ascertain what kind of living wage is essential to exalt a family out of indigence. A parent with two kids would have to earn over $8.00 an hour for a living wage and a family with three kids would need over $10.00 an hour to lift their families to 130% of the 2000 poverty line since food stamp guidelines are 130% of the official poverty thresholds. For this the St. Louis voters put to use in 2000 when they joined their city's living wage ordinance at 130% of the federal poverty guideline for a family of three, $8.67 an hour with benefits and $9.92 without. Any estimation of a real living wage must make out what common sense and our government has long acclaimed that wages far higher than minimum wage still leave families in need. A task for the living wage movement is to keep on to try to make the legislative enactment of living wage ordinances outline living wages up to a minimal standard copiously to provide the means for workers to become self-supporting.

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