Is Labor Day just a day to celebrate workers’ labor in name, without ensuring that those workers actually benefit?
“The basic bargain of America is that no matter who you are, where you come from or what you look like, if you work hard & play by the rules, you can make it, ” says U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez on the agency’s 2014 Labor Day website.
But for working families earning minimum wage, that’s just not true.
As the Alliance for a Just Society reported this week in Families Out of Balance, low-income workers are saddled with debt, and are earning wages well below a living wage. A living wage allows workers to provide for their family’s basic needs, as well as have some money for savings and miscellaneous expenses like clothing.
In seven out of the 10 states studied, the state minimum wage provides less than half of the living wage for a single adult. In all 10 states, the minimum wage provides less than one-third of a living wage for a single adult with two children.
When workers can’t make ends meet, families have to make tough choices about what to cut – a new back-to-school outfit, school supplies, visits to the doctor, or even meals.
For working parents, it is heartbreaking. As Ashley Rogers, a single mother in Florida notes, “I can’t afford to give my kids the things they want, and they don’t understand that I just don’t have the money.”
Working fulltime should mean more than barely scraping by. It is a basic value we share and honor on Labor Day. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Labor Day is “a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country” – in other words, a celebration.
For workers to truly be celebrated, they must first be compensated. Families Out of Balance proposes a number of policy solutions, including increasing the federal minimum wage to a real living wage, abolishing the tipped minimum wage, and supporting workers – and future workers – through investments to higher education.
For states that have yet to expand Medicaid eligibility, expanding that access to care will ensure that working families are able to go to the doctor without falling into debt.
It’s time to truly recognize the contributions of all workers to the well-being of our communities. That starts with making sure that working families have incomes that allow them not only to survive, but to thrive.