Wage to Live

by Nikki Zeichner

New York City is a meeting place of extremes. It’s a place where people that appear to have nothing in common rub elbows in unexpected ways, and find that their lives share many identical experiences and sentiments. Despite an often apparent feeling of anonymity, there is always an underlying connection that we, as city inhabitants, have to each other. Albeit large, we all know that New York City is a community.

And yet, despite the interconnectedness of the millions living here, we generally don’t talk about the way that some people in the City earn unreal amounts of money and others work full time for unlivable wages. Perhaps not having to talk about wage disparity is one of the freedoms of living in the city. However, it’s also a tremendous problem.

In New York City, because the cost of living is high, a living wage for a single person is a little over $18 per hour (based on a formula by Universal Living Wage, which allows rent to only count for 30% of one’s earnings, and based on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s account of the rental rate of a studio in NYC as $926). Needless to say, many people in the City are earning less than this amount – and a disproportionate percentage of those earning less than a living wage work in the service industry. Many believe that low wages in the service industry are inevitable and that businesses cannot afford to pay higher wages. But profits are growing where wages have not kept pace. The restaurant industry, for example, experienced 5.6% growth in 2006 and is expected to grow by 7.2% by 2017. Such growth indicates that that higher wages are feasible.

Those of us who have worked in the service industry, those of us who work full time and still struggle to make ends meet – and even those who earn decent wages but are aware of the struggle that so many people experience – personally understand the need for wages to become more livable. But how can we, as a community, prove that higher wages will not only benefit workers, and the community, but could be beneficial for the industry?

A 2005 study performed by Cone, a Boston-based strategic marketing firm, found that 86% of consumers are willing to alter their consumption in order to support businesses that further a social cause. The success of recent conscientious consumption campaigns, such as Fair Trade, also show that people want to support responsible businesses and that consumers can have a tremendous impact on wages by choosing with whom to conduct business. Since New York is a place full of both underpaid workers and conscientious buyers, it’s the perfect place to start.

For this reason, a few young, creative lawyers are teaming up with grassroots advocates, religious leaders, social entrepreneurs, and restaurateurs to launch a project called Wage to Live – a conscientious consumption campaign designed to raise the wages of workers within the service industry beginning with restaurants in NYC. Wage to Live will promote responsible business owners who strive to pay their workers living wages and will prove that living wages are a component of smart and successful business. Because restaurants are selected on a whim, and staffed by some of the lowest paid workers in NYC, we expect this consumption campaign to bring about much needed change in the industry and the entire New York City community.

Check out Wage to Live online and become part of our community by joining our mailing list.

Comments

[Michelle Paster]

Los Angeles is like this too. Having grown up here, and being in and out (now back in) throughout my late teens and early twenties, I mainly meet people who have moved here to work in film production or try to become actors (aka "waiters"). LA, more so than New York, lacks community. One way to brige the gap between the Asian-American driving the Audi and the gentleman from Mexico driving his truck up and down the 101, is to talk to people. Talk to strangers on the street: ask them how their day is going. Ask them if they like how they spend their time - most likely working. LA is a place where it seems like no one works- where at 11am, men and women will be working out at a West Hollywood Crunch Gym; where a real estate agent will be grabbing coffee with his former college roomate at 2pm.

In an attempt to open people's eyes to the community that is LA, to the jobs that run the city, I am producing and directing the documentary film, JOBS FOR RENT. The film's focus is "jobs we ignore," from drudging through an assembly line warehouse to swinging apartment for rent signs, all the meanwhile finding out the true nature of these hard-to-do (not well-to-do) workers.

The tongue in cheek look, examines jobs women don't tend to work in: construction sites and gardeners, and the reaction of the current employees to a woman wanting to get these jobs.

The film also focuses on how do these low wage workers survive in LA. Do they wake up every morning loving what they do? Did they choose their job or did their job choose them?

www.partialreality.com
www.jobsforrent.com
michelle@partialreality.comfor more information

So thank you to Barbara's "Nickel and Dimed" for learned inspiration.

[JP Merzetti]

An interesting commentary, and I'd love to see the documentary!
The whole concept of a living wage (as a long-time worker) sometimes seems to me to be a concept that dances just outside the reach of common perspective. As a very young man given to streetwise pursuits - to remove oneself from homelessness and transience - all it ever took was a job - any job.
Now, the rules are entirely changed.
And we ask - why? What truly is the reason?
I suspect that current needs for profit margins of a certain calibre have a lot to do with it. I suspect that we live in an economic climate that offers far less payoff to the worker. It is not that the funds aren't there at all - it is that the needs of corporate and shareholder profit require a greater share of the pie. Why?
To be more competitive? I don't think that's the answer. I suspect the real answer is that certain powers have constructed and fashioned a world in which it is just that much more acceptable to be just that much more greedy.
This is done by those who do it - because they can, and get away with it.

That small and smaller businesses would step outside this policy and create fair wages - intrigues me. One asks, well of course - why not?
If more do this - perhaps a standard is set - people discover that it works, has positive payoffs, and more people benefit directly because of it.
This flies directly in the face of the opposite practice - to siphon off as much wealth into as few pockets as possible.
Perhaps higher wages should not be just "feasible" - but mandatory in the public realm for a common cause - that of distribution of wealth in a more equitable manner.

We have also created of course - a strange infltionary ramp-up in the past 3 decades. I have never witnessed just moaning and groaning in households earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year. They're living a half a million dollar lifestyle. The half-millions are living a million. And so it goes. On the other end of the scale, costs insignificant to well-paid people overwhelm workers who can't meet them. When this includes basic necessities of life - it doesn't matter much that the cost of tekkie-toys have dropped 500%, does it?

At any rate - the concept of a wage to live certainly needs to be shown workable and profitable overall. I believe that if this spreads throughout the entire service community - it would have enormous impact. After all - that is the one largest growing job sector in an otherwise stagnant market. I believe it will absorb a significant amount of well-educated people one day. People who will be inclined to demand something better than bottom-barrel wages.

[annika]

I live in NYC too. I think the biggest and underlying problem here is real estate, as you alluded. It's far overvalued and we lose beautiful would-be landmarks everyday, in favor of a glass luxury condo mausoleum fate. There went affordable housing.

There are two drivers here I think: rapacious cronies of Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and the suburbanization of NYC. Chain stores are invading, driving up rental prices and forcing locals out. We have lost nearly 10 restaurants, including our neighborhood 24-hour deli, and countless other venues. We have only a few non-Starbucks cafe, which are not open very late.

We now host (on the Upper West Side) Best Buy, Cold Stone Creamery (which makes their workers sing as they work in the most humiliating act I've seen short of being a sex worker), Staples, Circuit City, Gap, Urban Outfitter, banana republic, and I could go on.

These places offer low income service jobs, certainly not in line with a NYC living wage.

[barbsright]

A friend of mine, who is a local newspaper reporter, dedicated a column he writes often to the memory of his favorite dish at a NYC resturant that had just closed. It had been in business for many years. I am sorry to hear that this is a major trend, and not just the choice of a few business owners to retire and shut down their respective enterprises.

[Bruce Zeichner]

Ironic that Hilary Clinton talked so much about fighting poverty in NYS and then proceded to abandon the city where the four poorest counties are...

[barbsright]

Ironic, Bruce?! More like 'par for the course' from the Clintons---and most politicians!!!

[Jacqueline]

barbsright wrote: "A friend of mine, who is a local newspaper reporter, dedicated a column he writes often to the memory of his favorite dish at a NYC resturant that had just closed. It had been in business for many years. I am sorry to hear that this is a major trend, and not just the choice of a few business owners to retire and shut down their respective enterprises."

It is no surprise that this restaurant - among many bars - suffered similar fates after NY enacted a sweeping statewide smoking ban where nobody can really get an exemption. Coincidence? Maybe not.

After reading a well-written book called "Dissecting Anti-smokers' Brains" by Michael J. McFadden, I am inclined to think there is probably a strong correlation.

The sad thing is that if the ban is an additional factor to NY state's economy, things were hard enough job-wise and eonomy-wise before the ban.

How many middle-aged and older mom & pop style small business people are going to get chances for jobs in the current job market after their little business goed under? These are also the folks who don't qualify for any unemployment benefits or welfare....Something to think about..

[Chris]

Affordable housing is a great concept but when the value of land skyrockets and property taxes do too then property owners must sooner or later bow to economic reality.

[Bill Bunker]

Well, I read this post and additional posts. If you choose to live in NYC, you simply pay the price.

It is true that the restaurant industry grows every year, but that is not a product of increased sales at all restaurants. It is a product of new restaurant concepts, start ups and expansion. This offers the consumer choice of venues and does not represent sales increases.

The average 'net' profit in the restaurant industry is generally no more than 12%. If a restaurant "nets" 1,000,000 in revenue, the total profit is $120,000. For all of the hard work, stress and investment by an owner, it is peanuts as compared with other industries.

You completely ignored that the average waitperson in a NYC restaurant earns an average of $189 daily in tips. Work four shifts and you gross $3200 per month.

How you live and what you can afford for housing is a product of the choices you make. If you choose to live in NYC or LA, you might have to work two or even three jobs. You pay for the "ego thrill" of living in the city.

Now as far as Best Buy, Staples, Wal-Mart are concerned. What wage would you propose for a person stocking a shelf?
The average hourly wage at those retailers is $11.50-$14.00 in urban areas. Anything beyond that makes it economically unfeasible to do business. Are we to assume that we need to ensure that everyone has enough money regardless of their job responsibility or performance?

Not everyone can make top wages, live in the best homes, etc. Our lot in life is related to choices that we have made (as a child, teen and adult) and breaks that we have been given. Equality is not the same as equity. Equality means that we all have the same opportunites and are assumed to be created equal. Equity means that the much poopooed 'leveling the playing field' turns us into a Socialist society.
We all know that is not an economic system that works.

I have worked two and often three jobs and have owned businesses that I built with sweat equity. It takes drive, energy, perseverance and luck. If you choose to be a waitperson or clerk, you have accepted your economic lot in life.

I will say, however, that if you do not have access to the tools that will prepare you to succeed in life, that is another story. It starts with your upbringing, behavior, attitude and desire to make something out of yourself.

Our ability to succeed and thrive in an economy is directly related to choices we make. What we earn is realted to the value of the job that we do. To assume that a clerk is at par in their job value to a CEO or a scientist is rediculous.

So here is a scenario:

Susan decided early on in high school that she was going to defy her parents, go out with her friends, drink, smoke and run wild.

Her grades were terrible and she was not able to get into a college. After graduation, she takes a job as a waitperson. At work, she meets Sam, a cook and they eventually get married. Susan was expecially attracted to Sam because he was 'cool' and had an athletic build.

Their total combined income is $30,000. Soon after being married, Susan becomes pregnant and gives birth to child.

Sam is abusive and drinks. He abuses Susan and after three years of this, Susan divorces Sam. Now, Susan needs to take on a second and even third job. Her total income is now $15,000 and she receives $300 per month in child support from Sam.

Susan is frustrated and is a victim of the choices that she made. Although she should not be 'written off', she has placed herself in this situation.

Susan is now in a rut and the people posting on this site think that we owe her something or need to ensure that she has 'economic equity'.
Did she not make her own choices?

[S]

Hi Bill,

This is a good point, and one I often encounter when I read about this subject. We are indeed completely responsible for our own bad decisions, and have to take our lumps and learn from them as best we can. However, one of the things I find that is frustrating into today's world is how the Susans of the world have children and then find themselves in ABJECT poverty in so many ways. While she did make a choice, is it fair to her or her child that the family is starving, that there is barely a roof over her head, for instance, she lives at home with relatives? Is it fair there are no jobs out there that will earn them enough money to get by or to move out? Is it fair you can't live on one income in today's world? The poor sleeping on the beach in Jamaica have a better life than some of these people, who simply don't have a shot at a life that comes close to something worth living. What ever happened to having the freedom to choose whether or not you WANT to move up the ladder? Why is being ambitious the only thing that is valued in this country? It has gotten to the point that if you aren't, you don't deserve to have a decent life, and years ago, this wasn't true. These people aren't asking to be rich, upscale or anything else. Should her child have to pay the price for her mistakes? Should her child have to live a life of misery? Are we saying that tribes in Africa that sit all day and do nothing but smoke pipes don't deserve to live a life where they have enough to eat, a place to sleep and a community to depend upon?

Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate, but it puzzles me. What is progress, and who deserves rewards, anyway? We're completely obsessed with work today, and it is to our detriment. What ever happened to having some kind of life outside of work, maybe to caring about our health, the food we put in our mouth, and even each other? And what's wrong with Susan caring about how her husband looks? It is the way every species survives--to pick healthy looking specimens and at a gut level it makes sense. Oh, and by the way, isn't every young person entitled to make a few mistakes? Some people don't get their act together right away--does that make them "bad"? (For instance, the young people in our prisons, which are very full.) Susan is still very young and maybe if she wasn't so bogged down at this point in her life, she could get herself out of the situation. Maybe she is calling shelters at this point, trying to figure out how to better herself. I think there was a documentary on PBS about this--people trying to get themselves off of social services. One woman wasn't even sleeping because she was going to school full-time and working full-time with a small child and hardly any help. She just kept being pushed back down. However, she did NOT give up and I give her a lot of credit--she was not going to stop until she had a PhD. But that takes tremendous determination. Oh and by the way, what about those who are disabled in some way, i.e. mentally, physically. They may have made these decisions as a result of their disease. Do they make their own choices? Many have impaired judgment, but work very hard. Something to think about.

[Bill Bunker]

Thanks for the reply S. No, I do think that the children should not be affected by parents bad decisions but neither should the rest of us.

Also, work does take alot of our life during the week but your off time is more importantly a product of "quality", not "quantity".

People are allowed to make mistakes but it is the repetitive mistake making that is irritating. 80% of those in prison (young people) will go out and get themselves in trouble and wind back up in prison again within 2 years. Whose fault is that?

There are more choices and opportunities in America than in any other country in the world. You have to have the ability and intelligence to manage those opportunities. Not everyone can excel in jobs and there have to be just as many sanitation workers as mechanical engineers.

If you economically make all jobs equal in value and compensation, you stifle basic human instincts to compete, survive and excel. That is called Socialism.

As far as the disabled, we have a moral obligation to make sure they are OK.

Homeless and mentally disabled on the streets are a product of "patients rights" legislation of the late 70's and 80's when they turned many of them out onto the streets. Where were they better off?
Sheltered and fed? OR On the streets?

The issue is that everyone is created equal but not all people are equal in ability or intelligence or skill level or drive or energy or competitiveness. What you hope for is some kind of utopian dreamscape that will never happen in our lifetime.

[Eric Root]

Sorry, that this reply is so late; I just stumbled onto this site. Bill, I will assume you are not as heartless and clueless as it looks, but you need to know that the use of a "strawman argument" is dishonest and corrupt. The strawman argument you are using is when you pretend that your interlocutors are arguing that Susan in your example should be making as much as a CEO (following it with a big "and that's socialism!") But please be honest enough to admit that nobody is, in fact, arguing that. What the good guys in this debate (IOW, the ones who disagree with you) are saying is that a society in which the poorest make, say, 1/500 as much as the richest is just as just and much more comfortable as a whole than the society which you prefer, in which the poorest make 1/5000 or less than what the richest do. You are lying if you try to equate the poorest making 1/500 with the porrest making _the same_. Just so you know.

[Gloria]

Yes, I "chose" to work at a big box store, but only because I desperately needed a job and no longer wanted to be driving an ice cream truck. Did I drop out of school? Did I have kids that I couldn't afford? No, and NO. I graduated from a private Catholic college with a 3.33 G.P.A., I have excellent writing skills, and put up with tons of crap on the jobs I've had. I took the big box job because I ran completely out of money, wasn't eligible for unemployment and couldn't get food stamps. I figured retail was better than starving and not having utilities. I guess I should have chosen something else, like trying to get a good husband when I was thin enough to get one. Unfortunately, my self esteem was/is so low, I felt that I was totally unattractive to men and didn't have anything to offer them. (I still don't.)So much for optimism and my college degree. Thank God my mom left half the house to me, half to my brother. I guess that is my payment for helping her take care of dad, and then taking care of her.