It Takes a Quality Job; For the Good of the Working Family
Labor Day Message 2005
William M. George,
President, Pennsylvania
AFL-CIO
A single mother of three girls ages 17, 15, and 13 makes $5.15 per hour. She is unable to get any utilities turned on in her name because she cannot afford to pay all the bills. She cannot afford to put food on the table, nor can she keep clothes on her children’s backs. With skyrocketing gas prices it takes two days of her pay simply to fill up the tank of her vehicle. She has been pushed farther and farther into debt just by providing the basic necessities in life to herself and her three daughters. Her employer never offers her 40 hours a week, so they do not have to provide healthcare benefits. This mother went out and obtained a second job which leaves her with precious little time to spend at home raising her children. Her teenage daughters are out of control and their lives are in shambles.
This scenario is more common than not. Be it a single mother, a single father, a two parent home, or children being raised by other family members, a family is still a family and the needs of the family remain the same. Right now in our country working families are under attack. Quality, family sustaining jobs are being shipped out of our country in record numbers, and our government is doing nothing to stop this. In fact, they are providing corporations with more incentives to outsource our family wage sustaining jobs through trade deals such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Since 2001, we have lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs due in large part to trade deals without worker protections, and the quality of jobs has declined drastically.
Average wages and benefits are shrinking in expanding industries. This leaves American workers with low wage jobs with no health care benefits. Working families cannot afford to allow the Wal-Mart model to become the standard for 21st century American jobs. Nearly 45 million Americans are without health insurance and the number of individuals with job-based health coverage has fallen. Workers are struggling to pay for rising health care premiums while our wages remain stagnant.
In Pennsylvania we have the opportunity to help better the lives of working families. Right now there are several proposed bills to raise the minimum wage. Our current minimum wage is a poverty wage. Some think that raising the minimum wage doesn’t matter because they believe it’s mostly earned by high school kids or spouses working in part-time jobs. Hardly! Evidence from studies of the 1996-97 federal minimum wage increase shows that, nationwide, the average minimum wage worker brings home more than half (54 percent on average) of his or her family’s weekly earnings. In Pennsylvania, according to Keystone Research Center, 71 percent of Pennsylvania workers whose wages would be raised directly by a minimum wage increase to $7.15 are adults, age 20 or older. Thirty-seven percent of Pennsylvania workers who would benefit directly from a minimum wage increase work full time, and 34.3 percent work between 20 and 34 hours per week. Someone such as the single mother with three children who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year makes $7,000 less than what the federal government says is needed to keep a family of four out of poverty.
Common sense suggests that if we want people to take responsibility for supporting themselves and their families by working, work needs to pay enough to make healthy family life possible. The reality of our country is both men and women need to work to support their families. Many women have to work not by choice, but by necessity. We need to move forward, not backward. This Labor Day we need to stop and think about what working families really need to fight for - better wages, health care benefits, and better working conditions. What it really takes is a quality job for the good of the American family.
