Word: waging
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...major difference between Gray and Jones, say advocates for low-wage workers, is that she lives in a city where janitors are unionized and have collectively negotiated salaries considerably above the minimum wage, what they call a living wage. The living-wage movement has been building steam as outsourcing moves millions of relatively high-wage manufacturing jobs overseas, leaving behind less mobile, low-paying ones such as health-care aides, security guards and janitors. But it may have got a new burst of energy when the Change to Win Federation, made up of seven labor unions that split from...
...campaign's supporters range from clergy like the Rev. Damon Lynch Jr., former president of the Baptist Ministers Conference, to politicians like former North Carolina Senator and likely presidential contender John Edwards. "The perception exists that [a living wage] is not a politically popular subject, and that people in general aren't interested in it," Edwards says. "But my feelings now on the subject are stronger than they've ever been. You can't live on $6, $7 or $8 an hour and have anything to fall back on. Instead of getting ahead, which most families want to focus...
...model Edwards and others want to replicate is the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) Justice for Janitors campaign, which over the past 20 years has helped to raise wages for workers in 27 cities, including Boston, Houston and Pittsburgh. Last week SEIU organized Justice for Janitors Day, with public protests in cities around the country. One of the key battlegrounds of the new offensive is Cincinnati, which gained 8,400 service jobs in 2004 alone. "It's a crucial test," says Stephen Lerner, head of SEIU's property workers' division. "What happens in Cincinnati is more of a lens...
...janitors' wages have risen, salaries for other Pittsburgh jobs have followed suit. Security guards, for instance, working in buildings where unionized janitorial workers are employed, have seen their earnings advance in parallel. Over the past three years, the median household income in the city has grown nearly 3%, from $39,643 to $40,699, adjusted for inflation. And annual janitorial-job turnover, as high as 300% in Cincinnati, is just one-tenth that rate in Pittsburgh. As a result, contractors' costs for recruitment and training are significantly lower. "For a community and its families, wage gains for low-income workers...
Cincinnati and 322,000 for Pittsburgh--and workforces similar in size and composition. Each has seen its once mighty manufacturing base crumble, with Cincinnati losing 17,000 manufacturing jobs over the past decade and Pittsburgh 22,600. But they diverge in their treatment of janitors and other low-wage service workers, and living-wage advocates say the results are telling. In Cincinnati neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine and the West End, where Jones lives, poor wages coupled with high rates of drug use, street violence and truancy have created a cycle of interdependent problems. More than half the adult black...