Toward a High-Wage Strategy
Addressing the Washington, D.C., District Council 20 Leadership Conference in February, where he urged attendees to build the strength of the union by turning more members into activists.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Melegrito
Message from the Secretary-Treasurer
By William Lucy
Ten years ago, a gallon of gas was $1.17. The median home price was $176,200. And the federal minimum wage was $5.15. Today gas is hovering around $2.50 a gallon and the median price of a home was $222,000 in 2006. The federal minimum wage? It’s still $5.15. That’s why the Democratic majority in the 110th Congress made raising the minimum wage to $7.25 a priority. It is also why AFSCME for years has called for an increase and made raising the wage part of our eight-point agenda for Congress.
With the vote by the House of Representatives to raise the minimum wage, the current Congress has done more for working people in its first 100 hours than the 109th Congress did in two years. We may finally have reason to be optimistic that workers’ concerns will receive the attention they deserve.
Some may ask why our union has been so vocal about raising the minimum wage when our members by and large earn more than that. The answer is simple: Our nation must pursue a high-wage strategy that rewards workers for the value of their labor. But we can’t stop there. Raising the minimum wage is one step in creating a tide that will lift all boats. AFSCME’s role is to articulate why a high-wage strategy is in the best interests of our nation’s workers and our future.
Challenging Corporate Culture
A high-wage strategy would compel us to challenge a corporate culture that treats workers as a company’s greatest liability instead of its greatest asset. How many times have you heard employers blame their troubles on labor and the “legacy” costs of pensions and health care for retirees? When this is the abiding philosophy, employers can get away with shortchanging employees; it’s even expected. It simply doesn’t make sense to pay much for what you don’t value.
This perspective also makes it attractive for employers — including public entities — to outsource anything and everything, and move operations offshore even when it’s bad for services.
That’s why AFSCME will continue to fight all efforts to outsource and privatize our members’ jobs. Each time the work of our members is contracted out to the lowest bidder, it winds up in the hands of companies whose number one motive is to make as much profit as possible. Paying ordinary working people the higher wages they deserve is rarely part of the plan. Instead, exorbitant CEO compensation — even if it bears no correlation to job performance or even reality — seems to fit in nicely. For more see Ask AFSCME and Talk Back in this issue.
Collective Bargaining: Proven Strategy
What is absolutely crucial to a high-wage strategy that rewards work? Bigger and stronger unions, because unions are what built America’s middle class. Winning public-sector collective bargaining where we don’t have it. Making it possible for all workers to have the freedom to join us in our fight by getting Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. (See related story.)
The bargaining process is the proven strategy for winning good salaries and decent benefits. Look at it this way: If the workers earning minimum wage had the right to sit with their employers to negotiate better pay, they would probably be earning more than $5.15 an hour.
AFSCME and the entire labor movement are the most potent forces in the struggle for better wages and job conditions, and training opportunities that prepare workers for better jobs. We’re the ones who must restore the social contract between American companies and workers — the contract that used to promise employees a certain standard of living if they upheld their end of the bargain. After all, you get what you pay for. And who wants a burger and fries prepared by the lowest bidder?
