Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us - Softcover

Sklar, Holly; Mykyta, Laryssa; Wefald, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0896086836 ISBN 13: 9780896086838

Publisher: South End Press, 2008

Synopsis

"They work full time in the richest nation on earth, yet they can’t make ends meet. They can’t make ends meet because their wages are too low. They are health care aides who can’t afford health insurance. They work in the food industry, but depend on food banks to help feed their children. They are child care teachers who don’t make enough to save for their own children’s education. . . . They care for the elderly, but they have no pensions."—from Raise the Floor

A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. But millions of people make up the working poor in the U.S. Rooted in powerful new research and personal narratives, Raise the Floor makes the case for a livable minimum wage and shows how good wages are good business.

Raise the Floor illustrates how the current annual minimum wage income of $10,712 a year just doesn’t add up. For example, to make ends meet, two parents with two children would have work more than three full-time minimum wage jobs—66 hours a week—leaving little time for sleep, family outings, religious services, or participating in community activities with their kids.

In a January 2002 poll of likely voters, Americans overwhelmingly identified raising the minimum wage as key to stimulating the economy. By a resounding 77 percent, these voters favored increasing the minimum wage to $8 an hour—the amount a single, full-time worker needs to meet minimum needs.

Raise the Floor is written in a lively, readable style and includes boxed quotes from folks in all walks of life who recognize the need for practical solutions to ending poverty. Documented with 60 tables and charts.

About this title

About the Author:

Holly Sklar's standout commentaries on economic and political affairs have appeared in hundreds of newspapers nationwide. She is the coauthor of Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap and author of Chaos or Community? Seeking Solutions, Not Scapegoats for Bad Economics. Sklar's other books include Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood (coauthored), the remarkable story of how the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative is rebuilding a long impoverished Boston community as a dynamic urban village. Sklar is the director of MediaVision, a strategic research, analysis and communications firm based in Boston.

Laryssa Mykyta is a senior policy analyst at Solutions for Progress. While her primary interest lies in labor market policy and effective anti-poverty policy, she has also applied her research and database management skills to projects on health care and education policy. Mykyta's past research addressed the effects of inequality on labor market outcomes for female and minority workers and examined the impact of racial divisions on society. Mykyta also teaches at Temple University where her courses include “Women and the Economy.”

Susan Wefald is director of institutional planning at the Ms. Foundation for Women and coordinator of the Raise the Floor campaign. Wefald previously ran a community development consulting business, where she conducted training in the U.S. and Russia. As former staff director of the Naugatuck Valley Project, Wefald coordinated the organizing and economic development work of a coalition of unions, churches and community organizations in Western Connecticut. She is the former assistant director of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board and taught “Community Organizing and Community Economic Development” at New Hampshire College.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

"They work full time in the richest nation on earth, yet they can't make ends meet. . .

They are health care aides who can't afford health insurance. They work in the food industry, but depend on food banks to feed their children.

They are child care teachers who don't make enough to save for their own children's education. . . They care for the elderly, but they have no pensions."

About this edition

• Publisher: South End Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0896086836
• ISBN 13: 9780896086838
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256