Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steve May, a former member of the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board and past vice president of the Champlain Valley Central Labor Council. May is also currently an elected member of the Richmond Selectboard.
[R]aising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is literally the least we can do. A wage that rises in increments can barely be considered just. Working people have been under assault by austerity politics across multiple administrations in Montpelier now. Fundamentally, we have been held hostage by lawmakers and opinion leaders who believe that labor is a cost to be contained. This is wrongheaded.
I contend that human capital is an asset which can be a partner in economic progress. People need dignity in their work. While “Moonlighting in Vermont” bumper stickers have become something of a punchline over time, there is nothing funny about the financial insecurities confronting families across our state. Most working people across Vermont will spend more than 20 percent of their lives engaged in workplace activities. Work is an integral part of the lives of most every Vermonter as a matter of necessity. Shouldn’t our politics reflect that reality?
The rest of the industrialized world understands that a workforce which is recognized as an asset in both word and deed thrives when basic benefits are extended to working people. For instance, tipped workers in our state receive subsistence wages. The fact that under certain conditions, some workers in aggregate receive more doesn’t take into consideration the circumstances confronting the throngs of tipped workers who don’t.
Work should provide dignity to those who labor. The fact that any worker could work full time, 40 hours a week, and still have to draw on welfare to make ends meet is an embarrassment. Work should pay … it should provide for the basic needs of each of us. Nothing more and nothing less. It shouldn’t take three jobs to make ends meet. People ought to be able to work one full-time jobs and not three part-time ones in an effort to provide for their individual needs and the needs of their families. A work culture that says that work/life balance is unimportant to sustaining the wellbeing of Vermont families has to be seriously called into question. Workers tethered to a dystopian unreality due to the rigors of their working lives exert a cost too great beyond the workplace. Perhaps those with the power and moral authority to make this decision are fine with the emotional and psychological consequences of the race to the bottom economy. We as a society do not have the luxury of continuing to turn a blind eye to the consequences of race to the bottom economics.
We as a society do not have the luxury of continuing to turn a blind eye to the consequences of race to the bottom economics.
Even the most fundamental issues around our relationship to our working lives deserve a rethink. In Canada, there is no unemployment insurance. That is not to say that displaced workers to the north do not have access to a displaced worker benefit. They do. It’s called employment insurance. It provides supports to Canadian workers; it also is the funding source which pays Canadians when they go on family leave to care for a sick family member or care for an addition to one’s family. They understand that people are critical to the economy, and they have acted accordingly. This is one small but significant difference. Language matters and words matter. Words and language frame our basic understanding of how our world is ordered. In this case, that frame applies to our most basic understanding of our relationship to work.
For years Vermonters have obsessed over brain drain, but have never truly fought to provide the resources to maintain a high-skill workforce. This is the moment where we decide what we are. The large-scale flight of human capital is one of the defining issues of our time. Are we as Vermonters committed to creating an economy and a society which will fight large-scale talent flight?
There are those who will argue that Vermonters can’t afford a $15 minimum wage. But those who say that $15 is too much miss the larger point. Inaction is action. Not moving to increase wages will only serve to deepen the flight of human capital out of Vermont. The unwillingness to address a wage increase will place even greater stress on workers and their families. Families under yet more stress will face growing obstacles across the social environment. Ultimately, distracted workers faced with challenging work/life balance issues will be less productive. Less productive workers under strain will ultimately be subject to other social ills of one kind or another which all of us as taxpayers will pay for at one point or another.
The question isn’t whether or not we as a state can afford to raise the minimum wage. Rather, the question is whether or not we can afford to not act on behalf of ordinary Vermonters, and if we put this off are we willing to accept the unintended consequences of that decision. To me that price seems much too high.
