AFT affiliates lead push for living wage

For a short moment after Hurricane Katrina, poverty took first place on the national agenda.

Even after the headlines receded, one mission remained: raising the minimum wage.

Now that battle is almost won. In the nation's capital, the federal minimum wage is poised to rise to $7.25 an hour over the next two years.

The next step is ensuring a living wage-that if you work hard at your job and play by the rules, you won't have to live or raise your kids in poverty. But many school support workers still have to rely on public assistance or charity just to get by. Every day, they must make agonizing choices among food, rent, healthcare, childcare and transportation.

The fight for a living wage is unfolding, not in Washington, D.C., but in communities nationwide, with legislation introduced in several states.

At the vanguard of the living wage movement are AFT members and their allies in Oklahoma, where no fewer than eight viable living wage bills for support staff are moving through the state legislature right now.

These bills haven't appeared suddenly. They are the fruit of years of work.

The average salary of school support workers in Oklahoma City is only $12,000, or well under half of the $25,700 that the Economic Policy Institute calculates is a "basic needs" budget for an Oklahoma City family of one adult and one child.

What's more, economists have long realized that the federal poverty line-$12,830 for one adult and child-is woefully inadequate. It's a 40-year-old calculation based on obsolete assumptions, like the cost of housing, which today can easily outstrip half a worker's pay.

"Most people just didn't know that support employees are working full-time and living in poverty," says David Gray, president of the Oklahoma City Federation of Classified Employees and an AFT vice president.

The local is part of a coalition, the Central Oklahoma Community Forum, which in mid-February formed a living wage committee to plan short-term and long-term strategies for getting the state legislation passed. Last year, lawmakers approved a 50 cent hourly wage increase for school support employees, and one of this year's bills would ensure compliance with that law.

Other states have living wage bills in the hopper, too. In Indiana, Kentucky and Washington, AFT state affiliates are keeping an eye on living wage bills in their legislatures.

In Kansas, state Rep. Dale Swenson, a member of the AFT-affiliated Kansas Association of Public Employees (KAPE), recently submitted a living wage bill. KAPE is awaiting word on a hearing, says chief of staff Carl Hill. "If Dale calls us over to testify," he says, "we'll be over there in a New York minute."

One of the more bracing reports comes from Mississippi, where a coalition of labor groups picketed at the state Capitol and held a news conference at the end of January. They were protesting the fact that Terry Brown, chairman of the Senate labor committee, hasn't convened his panel in four years.

"Anything referred to the Senate labor committee dies," says Sue Hatem, president of the Mississippi AFT. "We are a democracy, and everybody should get a chance to vote."
On the local level, AFT New Mexico won a Santa Fe living wage bill in 2003 that's still generating pay raises for both public and private sector employees. Last year, workers were bumped up to at least $9.50 an hour, and next January they will make at least $10.50 an hour, with cost-of-living increases after that.

Members of AFT New Mexico staffed phone banks, went on community walks and talked with the mayor to get the law passed, says Kathy Chavez, president of the Albuquerque Educational Assistants Association and an AFT vice president.

"We just rallied and rallied and pushed and pushed until we got it," she says.

Building coalitions

With the prospect of a higher federal minimum wage, it might be tempting for activists to sit back and relax-but they won't. In Oklahoma, our union is working with allies to coax the living wage bills out of committee, says Clifton Ogle, president of AFT Oklahoma. If the bills make it to the governor's desk, Ogle says, "he has assured us he would consider signing them."

The key to success will be building coalitions, notes Gray: "The labor movement isn't an entity in and of itself. It's part of a broader community."

Karen Spradlin, a community advocate, has been helping press for a living wage in Oklahoma. Although she's not sure the most substantive bills have enough votes to pass this year, she is trying to win new allies. In February, she spoke with one conservative business owner who opposes raising the minimum wage but wants to make absolutely sure that school support staff earn a living wage. "That gives me hope," she says. "When it comes to school support workers, it's easier to make a case."