Families Out of Balance: Living Wages Move Families from Survive to Thrive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEScreen shot 2014-08-26 at 5.45.16 PM
August 26, 2014
Contact: Kathy Mulady
(206) 992-8787
kathy@allianceforajustsociety.org
 

Read the Families Out of Balance report here.

Low-income families are already struggling to meet basic needs. Factor in suffocating household debt, and it is clear that families not making a living wage have little chance of building for the future.

As the gap between minimum wages and living wages continues to grow, we find that low-income households face a disproportionate debt burden — to an alarming degree. Families are forced to navigate a system that sets them up to fail, resulting in painful kitchen table conversations as households confront impossible balance sheets.

Job Gap: Families Out of Balance, produced by the Alliance for a Just Society, is the first report in the Alliance’s 2014 Job Gap Economic Prosperity Series. This study examines just what it takes to move beyond living paycheck-to-paycheck and the challenges that low-income families burdened with debt face.

The report also includes living wage findings for five household types in 10 states and in New York City. The Alliance has produced a Job Gap Study on jobs and wages since 1999.Continue reading “Families Out of Balance: Living Wages Move Families from Survive to Thrive”

Job Gap: Working Families Struggling, Sliding Deeper into Debt

JobGapNYSMeme2Debt – it’s become so entrenched in our daily lives that it’s almost a given. Debt is often a choice for higher income families, as an investment in the form of a mortgage or as a means to help pay for college.

However, lower-income households often end up in debt because their incomes leave them living paycheck-to-paycheck without a cushion for even minor incidentals. When an someone gets sick, the doctor bills pile up. If they attend college to improve their job opportunities, the student loan debt piles up.

It is an impossible balance sheet, resulting in families cutting back on necessities like health care, meals, or heat in the winter as they try to scrape by.

Today, Alliance for a Just Society released Families Out of Balance, the first report in the 2014 Job Gap Economic Prosperity Series. The report shows exactly how dramatically lower-income workers are disproportionately burdened by debt.

In addition, the reports shows that minimum wages in 10 states studied across the country fall far short of a living wage – even without adding debt to the equation.Continue reading “Job Gap: Working Families Struggling, Sliding Deeper into Debt”

In the New York Times, Make the Road N.Y. Members Tell Obama “Stop the Deportations”

Juan Carlos Valdez, a member of Alliance For a Just Society affiliate Make The Road New York, is featured along with his family in a new video on the New York Times site. From MRNY:

While Juan Carlos’ sons are protected by the President’s temporary Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), unless the President takes meaningful executive action, Juan Carlos and his wife Nancy could one day face deportation and have their family — and the life they’ve worked hard to build for their kids in New York City — torn apart.

That’s why we’re coming together for a national day of action for immigration relief next Thursday, August 28 in Washington, DC. You can take action today by calling the White House and asking President Obama to stop deportations of immigrant families.Continue reading “In the New York Times, Make the Road N.Y. Members Tell Obama “Stop the Deportations””

Let’s Put Some Muscle on Those Skinny Health Care Networks

LAH Orange 2019735258** This article by LeeAnn Hall  first appeared in Huffington Post **

Have you heard about the latest fad in health care? It’s called “skinny networks.”

Normally, when I hear the words “skinny” and “health” in the same sentence, I think about the importance of diet and exercise. Yet, when we’re discussing health provider networks, there’s nothing healthy about skinny.

A health provider network is the set of primary care doctors, specialists, hospitals, and other facilities in a patient’s health plan. When you’re selecting your health insurance, often one of the first things you do is check the provider list on the insurer’s website. You want to know whether you’ll be able to see your doctor if you choose that plan.

However, being able to see your family doctor isn’t the only thing that matters in a health provider network. Patients also count on networks to offer specialists and facilities close to home, so they can get care they need when they need it, without exorbitant out-of-network costs.Continue reading “Let’s Put Some Muscle on Those Skinny Health Care Networks”

Justice for Michael Brown! End Racial Profiling and Police Violence

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The images of protest and militarized police response in Ferguson, Missouri are shocking. But developments in that small suburban town are simply exposing the racial reality that millions of people of color face every day.

Everyday experiences with the courts, media, government authorities and police remind us, in ways large and small, that the lives of young brown and black kids have little value in society.

Police and vigilante killings of young black and brown people are commonplace in communities of color. The killings of Renisha McBride, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and others in recent years have cast a national spotlight on an epidemic of senseless killings of unarmed people of color. All too often our children are dying at the hands of those entrusted with public safety. All too often the killers go free. The message is clear: black and brown people just don’t count.

It has been widely reported that in Ferguson—a town whose population is nearly two-thirds Black—there is only a single Black city councilperson, and three Black police officers in a force of 53. Ferguson reported 8 times as many black arrests as white arrests for the first part of 2014. Blacks represent 86% of all traffic stops and 92% of all searches. The data show a clear practice of racial profiling. The numbers might differ a little from place to place, but these statistics are a stark image of the racial divide that exists in small towns and large across our country today. Racial disparities in crime statistics are the norm from coast to coast.

Blacks, Latinos, American Indians and other people of color are routinely excluded from the halls of power and subjected to racialized police policies like profiling and stop-and-frisk.

Continue reading “Justice for Michael Brown! End Racial Profiling and Police Violence”

Fair Wages Aren’t Enough, Workers Need Hours, Predictability, too

Fast-Food-EmployeesThere’s no question that working families across the country are struggling to get by; wages for most income levels have been stagnant or declining over the past decade, while the cost of living has continued to increase.

One key to helping working families is increasing wages so that there are more living wage jobs available. However, increasing the minimum wage is only part of the solution for helping families whose low-wage jobs do not always include steady work.

Living wage calculations, like those produced by the Alliance for a Just Society, must make assumptions to remain consistent year after year. One of those assumptions is that workers have jobs where they can actually work 40 hours per week, year-round (for 2,080 hours per year). For many workers, this assumption doesn’t match their reality.

For retail and restaurant workers, a steady schedule with enough hours can be hard to come by. Retail salespersons and food preparation and service workers are two of the top five occupations with the greatest projected job growth between 2012 and 2022, but are also low-wage occupations, with 2013 median annual wage of $21,140 and $18,330, respectively. These jobs are also often shift work, without set schedules.Continue reading “Fair Wages Aren’t Enough, Workers Need Hours, Predictability, too”

Beyond Cellblocks Webinar: Ending Police-ICE Collaboration

This year, Alliance for a Just Society is hosting a series of webinars discussing techniques used in different parts of the country to combat racism and criminalization.  Our most recent webinar focused on tactics for ending police collaboration with Immigration officials.   This Friday, at 11 a.m., join us for a webinar on Native American storytelling. Click here to register for the storytelling webinar.

A little bit about our last webinar: Throughout the country, police have been partnering with immigration services, resulting in unfair targeting and treatment of racial minorities. On July 1, the Alliance for a Just Society and the Center for Intercultural Organizing convened a live webinar discussion about ending collaboration between local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).Continue reading “Beyond Cellblocks Webinar: Ending Police-ICE Collaboration”

Everyone Benefits When Workers Earn Living Wages

The South Korea government is taking an interesting approach to stagnating wages. The South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance is pushing a policy to offer tax credits to those firms that increase worker pay.

This legislation — which, if approved by the South Korean parliament, would go into effect in January — creates a policy incentive for firms to increase wages. As in America, wage growth in South Korea is “not keeping pace with corporate profits in South Korea, where household debt is rising while companies hoard cash,” according to this Bloomberg story.