Living Wage Movements: Global Perspectives

by Figart; Deborah M.

• ISBN13: 9780415320023
• ISBN10: 041532002X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Living wage activism has spanned time and space, reaching across decades and national boundaries. Conditions generating living wage movements early in the twentieth century have resurfaced in the twenty-first century, only on a global scale: "sweated" labor, macroeconomic instability, and job insecurity. The original essays in the volume assess the movement for higher living standards in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. Each of the individual chapter authors has extensive experience in academia or research institutes, in public policy or in the labor movement. A variety of innovative efforts to achieve living wages are profiled. Minimum wage increases, labor code activism, low pay campaigns, and fair wage clauses, for example, have begun to reverse a growing two-tiered labor market. Women, workers from racial and ethnic minority groups, and employees in service and sales occupations have been noteworthy beneficiaries. Upon reviewing the empirical evidence, the book's contributors makestrong cases both for and against living wage activism. The effective blend of historical, contemporary and global perspectives provides opportunities for teachers, scholars, and activists to evaluate how we can address low pay at the organizational and macroeconomic levels.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
Notes on contributors	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
List of abbreviations	xvii
1 Introduction to living wages around the globe	1	(12)
DEBORAH M. FIGART
PART I What is a living?	13	(54)
2 The right to an individual living wage	15	(12)
JOHN A. RYAN
3 Wages and hours: historical and contemporary linkages	27	(16)
ELLEN MUTARI AND DEBORAH M. FIGART
4 Living wage laws and the case for a targeted wage subsidy	43	(8)
DAVID A. MACPHERSON
5 The determination of living wages	51	(18)
DAVID H. CISCEL
PART II Living wage and low pay campaigns: contemporary global activism	67	(88)
6 The living wage movement mushrooms in the United States	69	(16)
DAVID B. REYNOLDS
7 Organizing homeworkers in Toronto's garment industry	85	(16)
JONATHAN EATON AND ALEX DAGG
8 Living wage and low pay campaigns in Britain	101	(21)
DAMIAN P. GRIMSHAW
9 The living wage in Australia: history, recent developments, and current challenges	122	(16)
JOHN BUCHANAN, IAN WATSON, AND GABRIELLE MEAGHER
10 The fight for living standards in New Zealand	138	(17)
PRUE HYMAN
PART III Evidence and lessons from US empirical studies	155	(70)
11 The Miami living wage ordinance: primary and secondary effects	157	(14)
BRUCE NISSEN
12 Minimum wages and living wages: raising incomes by mandating wage floors	171	(17)
DAVID NEUMARK
13 The economic impact of living wage ordinances	188	(22)
MARK D. BRENNER
14 Living wages in US communities: an analysis of costs of services and economic development	210	(15)
ANDREW J. ELMORE
Index	225