Fwd: Holly Sklar: Martin Luther King Jr. Valued Workers

[Guest guest]

At Liberty Underground we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday today.

We think of him as America's greatest hero.

 

What puts him in that highest place of honor is that he fought a war as just

as any, but unlike other warriors thrust on us in our corporate history books,

he did not use violence. He was often beaten and jailed, but through it all

asked his followers to employ peaceful means to achieve justice. He defeated

American Apartheid and won the war without ever dropping a bomb or firing a

missile. This is a lesson we must be sure to teach the children, a message of

love conquering hatred.

 

King wanted our nation to stand for something higher. In a speech at

Riverside Church in New York City the year before he was murdered, he called our

country " the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, " and would, no

doubt be on the side of the peace movement of 2006 if he were here with us, in

opposing the bloody illegal invasion of Iraq.

 

At the time he was murdered King was supporting a strike by garbage workers.

 

Today, in this wealthiest nation on earth, millions work for the minimum wage,

more people than ever before, even as the minimum wage has lost over 40% of its

buying power since the year King was murdered. Most of these workers are women

with children, women who badly need a decent child care service.

 

We can honor King's memory by clamoring for a national system of child care

that will make life somewhat more bearable for the millions of single parents

who have been damned by the " welfare reform " of the 1990's, which threw so many

children out into the streets without hope. Any realistic " War on Terror " must

include this, and any realistic welfare reform would include the hundreds of

billions of tax dollars spent annually on corporate welfare through

" privatization " --Jack

 

 

 

 

Martin Luther King Jr. Valued Workers

 

 

by Holly Sklar

 

 

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the brink of the Great

Depression and died fighting for the right of workers to earn a decent living.

On March 18, 1968, days before his murder, King told striking sanitation

workers in Memphis, Tenn., " It is criminal to have people working on a full-time

basis ... getting part-time income. " King said, " We are tired of working our

hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily

basic necessities of life. "

Two years earlier on March 18, 1966, King had called for Congress to boost the

minimum wage. " We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress

today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its

coverage, " he said. " A living wage should be the right of all working

Americans. "

King did not dream that in the year 2006, he would be remembered with a

national holiday, but the value of the minimum wage would be lower than it was

in the 1950s and '60s. At $5.15 an hour, today's minimum wage is nearly $4 less

than it was in 1968, when it reached its historic high of $9.09, adjusted for

inflation.

The minimum wage has become a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage. A

full-time worker at minimum wage makes just $10,712 a year -- less than $900 a

month -- to cover housing, food, health care, transportation and other expenses.

As Congressional Quarterly observed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, " In the

Lower Ninth Ward and other impoverished neighborhoods of New Orleans, people

have long waged battle to make ends meet. ... That was a nearly unattainable

goal in a city where many of the jobs were in hotels and restaurants that paid

around the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. "

A low minimum wage is a green light for miserly employers to pay poverty wages

to a growing share of the work force -- not just workers at the minimum, but

above it. In its 2005 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, the U.S. Conference of

Mayors found that 40 percent of the adults requesting emergency food assistance

were employed, as were 15 percent of the homeless.

A low minimum wage is a green light for greed. Between 1968 and 2004, domestic

corporate profits rose 85 percent while the minimum wage fell 41 percent and the

average hourly wage fell 4 percent, adjusted for inflation. In the retail

sector, which employs large numbers of workers at or near minimum wage, profits

skyrocketed 159 percent.

With the federal minimum wage stuck in quicksand, a growing number of states

have raised their state minimums above $5.15 -- Oregon and Washington are

highest at $7.50 and $7.63, respectively. Studies by the Fiscal Policy Institute

and others have shown that states with minimum wages above the federal level

have had better employment trends than the other states, including for retail

businesses and small businesses.

Dan Gardner, commissioner of Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries, says,

" Overall most low-wage workers pump every dollar of their paychecks directly

into the local economy by spending their money in their neighborhood stores,

local pharmacies and corner markets. When the minimum wage increases, local

economies benefit from the increased purchasing power. "

In the words of Joel Marks, national director of the American Small Business

Alliance, " Fair wages are good for business. "

Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, while denying fair pay for

minimum-wage workers. On Jan. 1, congressional pay quietly rose to $165,200 --

up $31,600 since 1997. And unlike minimum-wage workers, members of Congress have

good health benefits, pensions and perks.

Wages are a bedrock moral issue.

It is immoral that workers who put food on our table go without health care to

put food on theirs.

It is immoral that workers who care for children, the ill and the elderly

struggle to care for their own families.

It is immoral that the minimum wage keeps people in poverty instead of out of

poverty.â™

King would tell Congress to value workers and raise the minimum wage. We need

a wage ethic to go with our work ethic.

Holly Sklar is co-author of " A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business

and Our Future " and " Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of

Us "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix

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