Editorial: Charade bonuses? Just pay N.C. workers a livable wage
Monday, May 24, 2021 -- It is past time that North Carolina policymakers assure citizens that every person who has a job is paid a living wage. It is no bonus to offer someone $1,500 to take a job that keeps them in poverty.
Posted — UpdatedIt is a fact. Unemployed North Carolinians who were forced out of work a year ago as the COVID-19 pandemic peaked are flocking back to their jobs.
It is an astonishing turnaround. Citizens have adhered to commonsense health precautions and regulations; federal and state economic policies have worked to keep most workers from the depths of poverty as well as help sustain many businesses.
There are some looking to perpetuate a myth that there are people who aren’t working or looking for jobs but simply continuing to accept government benefits (“paying people not to work” is how these mythmakers like to phrase it).
The facts just don’t bear it out. North Carolinians want to be on the job.
Private sector employment for April has increased from 3.337 million a year ago to 3.763 million. In the hospitality and leisure sector, some have contended restaurant wait staff are shirking jobs in favor of government payouts. Not so say the figures. Employment surged 54% from 287,000 last April to 442,000 this year.
What some workers are realizing, as they’ve struggled to cope during the pandemic, is the costs of childcare and related expenses to maintain a low-wage job are actually money losers. They have come to recognize it costs some of them MORE MONEY to work at minimum-wage jobs (or hospitality jobs that pay even less) that don’t even include health care and other basic benefits.
The increase in federal unemployment benefits have shed a bright light – and North Carolina workers spot it – that some employers simply aren’t paying them a living wage. Some families have found they are better off with a single breadwinner instead of two. It is not about living off of unemployment payment benefits. It is the realization that it does not make economic sense to take a job that costs a family more money than it brings in.
State policymakers – from Gov. Roy Cooper to leaders of the General Assembly and rank-and-file legislators – shouldn’t shy away from looking to be creative in rebuilding the state’s work force.
But they also need to disabuse themselves of the notion that the problem is the workers. North Carolinians are not lazy, they are not shirkers and they are not the problem.
It is past time that policymakers assure citizens that every person who has a job is paid a living wage. It is no bonus to offer someone $1,500 to take a job that keeps them in poverty.
The legislature needs to adopt a living wage for North Carolina’s workforce -- a wage for workers that would make a job economically viable.
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