Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steve May, who is a former member of the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board and past vice president of the Champlain Valley Central Labor Council, May also is a clinical social worker and member of the Selectboard in Richmond, where he resides.
[T]his is supposed to be a financial boon time. The Vermont Department of Labor just published numbers for September and unemployment is 2.9 percent statewide. Three percent is generally considered to be full employment.
Full employment as an economics term means that generally anyone who wants work can find work. It does not, however, speak to the type of work. It simply measures whether one is working full time. So if you are earning poverty wages but working full time, the real impact of your employment situation doesn’t register. If one is stuck in a dead-end job without the prospect of promotion or a raise, that 3 percent number is far from reflecting your economic reality. If you work multiple jobs to make up for low wages or crummy benefits, that isn’t taken into consideration by that 3 percent number, either. And if you work multiple part-time jobs to make up for the fact that you can’t land one full-time job, that 3 percent number is again meaningless.
We have come to accept precarious work conditions as the new normal. Somehow, it has become noble to work three part-time jobs, often earning less than starvation wages and without benefits like health care. Somewhere along the way this ritual became the professional equivalent of hazing. It is not OK to ask this of anyone as they attempt to build a career. Work should create dignity. It should serve as the basis of professional and personal development affirming values like problem-solving and resiliency.
Here in Vermont, the part-time and seasonal economy have become mainstays and with it comes the low-wage income insecurity that has been the centerpiece of our economy for much too long. We have celebrated the “moonlighting in Vermont” ethos for much too long. There is nothing noble about having to work a side hustle (or two, or three) to make ends meet. There is nothing in anybody’s long-term interest that affirms a 60-, 70- or 80-hour workweek. In fact, the inverse is true; there is a real opportunity cost to working excessively. Over time, people become less effective carrying out complex activities. In addition, the grind of excessive work activity is known to create both physical and mental health issues.
Workers need to be valued as human capital. Skilled employees are assets to be raised up — not costs to driven down. The low-wage approach that has attacked workers over the last several years has resulted in the large-scale flight of Vermont workers. Generations of Vermonters have been cascading out of state to jobs with higher pay and more lucrative work environments across state lines. Be clear, workers are leaving Vermont because the low-wage, high-cost race to the bottom economic approach of multiple administration have made it impossible to raise a family here. People are not abandoning Vermont, they very much want to live here, and they want to make a life here. Just see the numbers for people who visit here, vacation here, and have second homes here. Vermont is just as popular as it ever was. These people who are coming can’t afford the poverty wages that come from multiple rounds of austerity budgeting from state government and a steady driving down of pay in the private sector.
Ultimately, workers are dynamic. That dynamism needs to be unleashed. When it is freed up, workers will be creative and innovate. Innovation will require that people feel safe taking on some personal and professional risk. A “universal basic income” can be the thing that permits workers to transition from work that barely pays their bills to careers that feed one’s soul. The idea of a universal basic income is that it should provide enough money to allow for some support while not removing the incentive to work. It however, can be the financial equivalent of breathing room so an aspiring entrepreneur can move from starvation to some measure of stability.
A basic income is especially important in a state like Vermont, where construction, agriculture, hospitality and tourism are all central to our economy today. These are all businesses that are seasonal by nature. Precarious work conditions underscore the need to establish a financial floor for workers. The on-again, off-again nature of work leaves many employees challenged by planning, which may or may not include drawing unemployment in the face of cyclical but sporadic work. Not being certain whether they can access unemployment insurance creates real barriers in people’s lives. Predictability is essential. Under a basic income system, workers would receive the same payment monthly. Because it’s income, it is taxable. It is more efficient than the boom and bust of filing and waiting for unemployment.
Universal basic income reflects the changing nature of work in our society. Historically liberals and conservatives both have supported basic income. It was championed by Richard Nixon and failed in Congress in the 1970s by a single vote. Economists across the political spectrum from Milton Friedman on the right to Robert Reich on the left have championed basic income as a way to protect workers from the ups and downs of the business cycle. Most importantly, it reflects the reality that the Vermont workplace has changed. So long as we continue to have more and more part-time work, freelancing out of necessity, forced independent contracting for workers and the like; workers are going to need a baseline of protection. While one can argue about how to fund a basic income or how much workers should be paid — and those are valid questions — it is increasingly clear that protections for Vermont workers must take the form of a universal basic income.
