Behind the debate over a living wage proposal in Providence is a movement that has spread into small and large communities and onto college campuses throughout the country. It is engineered by a powerful coalition of union, community and religious groups and opposed by a small, but powerful collaborative of businesses under the banner of the Employment Policies Institute Foundation.
Both groups claim adamantly that their positions will not only benefit workers, but will benefit businesses.
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A higher wage for the working poor, the proponents suggest will help companies recruit and retain betters workers, and will infuse more money into poorer neighborhoods. Opponents believe a living wage will force companies to eliminate hours or employees, thus hurting the very people that the pro-living wage movement wants to help.
At issue are proposals across the country that would establish a living wage of 150 to 225 percent above the minimum wage for government workers or employees of contractors and businesses receiving government contracts or financial assistance. The proposals differ from city to city, but most commonly they require businesses to pay the living wage while their employees are engaged in work for the city. In Providence the proposal is for $12.30 an hour.
Living wage proposals are now the law in nearly 60 communities. Neither side has produced specific data measuring the impact that these laws have had either on businesses, municipalities, or the neighborhoods.
Waging the battle in Providence has been the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce in opposition and Jobs for Justice for the proponents.
Jobs for Justice is part of a national coalition of similar organizations that in essence are part of an offshoot of a group called Acorn that has been described as a coalition of union, religious and community organizations, funded in part by the labor movement.
Locally, Jobs with Justice describes itself as part of a “national network” that was founded in 1987 when “the leaders of major unions advanced a vision for Jobs with Justice that important economic and social justice campaigns for workers’ rights could only be won through the combined force of labor, community and faith-based groups.”
Matthew Jerzyk, local Jobs for Justice director, said locally the group’s steering committee — its equivalent to a board of directors — reflects the movement’s national coalition. A list of those on the steering committee includes a number of community groups, a large number of labor unions, and a much smaller representation from religious groups.
Among its members are locals of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Providence Newspaper Guild, locals of the State Employees International Union, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, Rhode Island Committee on Safety and Health, Fund for Community Progress, Coalition for Consumer Justice, and Progresso Latino, among the 34 groups.
Nationally, opposition to the Living Wage movement is focused in the Washington, D.C. based Employees Policy Institute (EPI) that has generated reams of research to oppose living wage and on other work employment issues.
EPI was formed 11 ago when a group of businessmen and women approached a former U.S. Chamber of Commerce labor executive who had been operating his own research and communications consulting firm for four years.
Richard Berman, the former chair of the labor section of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not only was asked to develop the concept, but then to implement it. Like many small, but powerful foundations it operates with little staff and out of Berman’s office.
In fact Berman serves as EPI’s part-time executive director. It has proven a lucrative position for both Berman and his company.
A review of EPI’s 990 reports, which as a non-profit it is required to file with the federal government, found no electronic filings for 1999 and 2000. A 1998 report showed that EPI raised $1.2 million, of which Berman took a salary of $85,000, other benefits of $78,967 for eight hours a week of work, and paid his own consulting firm $818,000.
Berman, in a telephone interview with Providence Business News said that last year the organization raised about $1 million, paid him a salary for his part-time executive director’s job of $140,000 and his company consulting fees of $350,000 to $400,000.
Berman, who would neither name the founding members nor current directors, said EPI farms out all of its economics research and currently has about 11 research projects under way, including living wage. One of Berman’s employees, an economist, is dedicated almost full-time to EPI, Berman said. EPI itself has no employees, he added, other than himself.
Among the projects that EPI — and Berman’s company — is working on is the living wage, an issue that Berman feels is misunderstood and misrepresented. He said EPI understands “the need for people to survive on more than five bucks an hour,” but said the living wage proposals are flawed because “it sweeps up everybody as if they were all sole support for a family of four. The argument is always made that a person who is sole support for a family of four couldn’t live on these wages. How many people fall into that category?”
He pointed to a study that he said was done in Connecticut that showed that the average family income of a minimum wage worker was over $60,000. “Obviously,” he said, “the minimum wage worker was the second, third or fourth wage earner.”
Berman and his group believe that a targeted living wage subsidy would “provide the living wage to the people who actually need it, but not provide those super high wages to people whose skills or needs don’t require it.”
He’s suggesting a targeted living wage based on earned income tax criteria.
