Asheville Citizen-Times
| March 1, 2006
Section: MOUNTAINS Edition: FINAL Page: 1B LESLIE BOYD STAFF WRITER STORY |
| By Leslie Boyd STAFF WRITER ASHEVILLE -- A seminar Tuesday on establishing a Living Wage Campaign likely will lead to a coalition that will advocate for wage increases for low-income workers. "There's already support for raising the minimum wage here in North Carolina," said Sorien Schmidt, executive director of the nonprofit N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh and one of two leaders of the seminar. "Eighty percent of North Carolinians approve of raising the minimum wage." City Council members, representatives from nonprofits and community activists attended the seminar, 16 people in all, and before it was over, several had agreed to explore forming a living wage coalition. "I think this could fuel a movement," said Isaac Coleman, community activist and veteran of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. "This is something we need to do, and I've found a lot of valuable information here." A move to increase the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour failed to pass the state Legislature by two votes last year. A bill to raise minimum wage to $6 an hour has passed the House and needs to pass the Senate and be signed by the governor, Schmidt said. "That's still a long way from being done, but I'm hopefully optimistic," she said. The federal minimum wage, $5.15 an hour ($10, 712 per year), isn't enough to raise a single mother with one child above the federal poverty level ($12,830). States can raise the minimum wage on their own, and 17 have done so. Using federal guidelines on the cost of food, housing, health care, child care, transportation, taxes and miscellaneous costs, a single mother with one child would need to make $15.90 an hour or $2,756 a month to meet expenses. The federal poverty guidelines also are a poor measure of what people need to meet basic expenses, said Barbara Zelter, program associate for the N.C. Council of Churches in Raleigh and seminar co-leader. "Our whole system of social programs is built on a lie," she said. "The federal poverty guidelines are not a fair measure of what a family needs to survive." Contact Boyd at 232-2922 or lboyd@CITIZEN-TIMES.com. |
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