Opinion

Editorial: Making minimum wage a livable wage needs to be top legislative priority

Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021 -- No one gains at the state's absurdly low minimum wage. Workers don't have the money they need for the basics to sustain themselves. As a result, somewhere at some time, someone else ends up paying the difference - when food must be on the table, when a health issue becomes a life-or-death emergency, when basic shelter must be provided.

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CBC Editorial: Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021; Editorial #8641
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.

North Carolina legislators aren’t shy about telling others how to run their governments, their local school systems or their lives.

But when it comes to HELPING them with support for local services, safe and up-to-date school facilities or provide for the well-being of all North Carolinians – particularly those with the greatest need – there doesn’t appear to be the same urgency.

Such is the case with making sure that every hard-working North Carolinian gets paid a wage that will keep them out of poverty. Pre-COVID-19 pandemic figures put North Carolina 40th in the portion of its population living in poverty – 13.6%. The poverty rate for women of working age is even higher, 14.4% and nearly 20% of our children live in poverty.

Legislators are working diligently to: Make sure citizens can carry firearms into places of worship and their adjacent schools; Get spectators back into the bleachers at athletic events; Tell city councils what they can and cannot spend on law enforcement as well as telling local law enforcement who can and cannot be kept in custody.

They’ve been so busy with these non-urgent items, appealing to their narrow partisan political base, they haven’t been able to find time to deal with one of the most pressing matters for all hard-working North Carolinians – making sure they receive a decent wage for their honest hard work.

It has been 12 years since North Carolina’s lowest-possible $7.25 an hour minimum wage has been changed. In that time, the buying power of that wage has dropped. A minimum wage earner’s clout at the cash register had gone down nearly $3,000 a year. The state’s minimum wage, for a single parent and child, is $2,340 less than the $17,420 federal poverty line.
Legislators did, in 2018, increase the minimum wage, just for state workers, to $15 an hour but kept in place a 2013 law that bans cities and counties from mandating a living wage for companies they do business with or others withing a municipality.

This is more meddling by the legislature in local affairs. There is no sound policy reason for local governments to be barred from setting higher minimum wage rates if they so choose. These local officials know far better what their communities need and shouldn’t be limited by an unnecessary state law.

No one gains at the state’s absurdly low minimum wage. Workers don’t have the money they need for the basics to sustain themselves. As a result, somewhere at some time, someone else ends up paying the difference – when food must be on the table, when a health issue becomes a life-or-death emergency, when basic shelter must be provided.

No one reasonably aspires to a society that tolerates homelessness; malnutrition or untreated illness. North Carolina has more than the means to address this.

Paying workers a fair, living wage is not a burden on employers nor consumers. We all pay – and are paying now -- a far higher price when we shortchange people for their hard work.

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