Word: minimum
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...employees enough to raise their income above the federal poverty level of $18,100 for a family of four. That works out to more than $8 an hour--though some cities with high living costs like Santa Cruz, Calif., require hourly wages as high as $12.55. (The federal minimum wage...
...attract employees. The laws give more bargaining muscle to unionized city and county workers, whose ranks have been thinned by the privatization of many government functions. Both directly and indirectly, living-wage laws can drive up government spending. Suffolk legislator Allan Binder, a leading critic of the county's minimum wage for contractors and firms that receive county funds, cites a study that found the county may have to shell out an extra $13.5 million a year for increased wages. "We have no idea of its impact," says Binder. "We're going into untried territory...
Economist Neumark found that from 1996 to 2000, poverty fell more sharply in living-wage cities than elsewhere. Disproportionate unemployment occurred but, he writes cautiously, "on net, living wages may provide some assistance to the urban poor." Living-wage advocates see Neumark as a conservative minimum-wage basher converted by the success of living wages--a characterization that appears to make him uncomfortable. Critics on the right fault his study for narrowly focusing on families pushed just above the official poverty standard at the expense of those who lost their jobs. Neumark emphasizes that more research is needed to determine...
...sweeping reforms. In February, New Orleans voters approved by 2-1 a referendum that would require every private employer in the city to pay at least $6.15 an hour. Activists went to court the next day to ask a judge to strike down a 1997 state law banning local minimum wages. Last week the judge ruled that ban unconstitutional (five other states have similar laws), so New Orleans will be free to force higher wages May 3, pending an expected review this week by the Louisiana Supreme Court...
...living-wage movement is generating organized resistance, notably among hotel and restaurant owners and other employers of low-wage workers. "I feel every minimum wage, even at the federal level, costs jobs," says Jerome Fein, 51, owner of the venerable Court of Two Sisters restaurant in New Orleans. "I think it's a business decision, not a government decision." New Orleans' new law, Fein says, will cost jobs at his restaurant and elsewhere in the city. But a large majority of the city's voters--including many of the 47,000 who work in service jobs--believe that their bosses...