I recently moved to British Columbia and have been following the recent city living wage ordinances and proposals with great interest. Before moving to Vancouver from Toronto last July I worked on two living wage campaigns in the US, both of which built on living wage laws to extend the victories beyond those initially covered.

Both campaigns were in Baltimore – the city that passed North America’s first city living wage ordinance and located in Maryland, the state that recently passed the first state living wage law. One of these two living wage campaigns has already resulted in wages going from an average of less than $4.50 an hour (in 2004) to the current wage of $12.25, even without workers being included under either the city or the state law. The other campaign is ongoing. It was announced following the first living wage victory and aims to extend and expand a living wage to more workers, including workers who are privately employed in the retail and restaurant sectors.

Living wage laws do more than ensure that governments don’t pay poverty wages to workers. That’s because the concept of a living wage communicates a powerful message about the value of each worker and the dignity of work. Nobody should work for a poverty wage, as wages should at the very least be enough support a family. Living wages communicate, without getting into too complex of economics, that any wage that results in poverty is simply unfair to workers and bad for the community. While living wages are not the end-all for sustaining a fair and just economy, they can be step in the right direction. This is especially true when living wage laws are built on to advance economic justice more generally, as was the case with Baltimore’s low-wage workers who are continuing to fight to extend the living wage to all workers, both publicly and privately employed. In this sense, the “symbolism” of living wage laws can be worth a lot to workers and communities.

Living Wages in Baltimore: Extending and expanding victories
I worked with low-wage workers in Baltimore as a human rights and community organizer with an organization founded by homeless day labourers in 2002. The organization, the United Workers Association (UWA), helped conduct a survey of day labourer working conditions in 2004, uncovering that many workers were paid as low as $4.50 an hour doing day labour jobs.

Wages this low were of course illegal, falling below the even abysmally low minimum wage of $5.15 (all wages are in US dollars) an hour at the time. To put this in perspective, $4.50 an hour is less than $9,320 a year – working full time. (In current dollars this would be just under $11,500 per year.) Add cheque cashing fees, transportation charges and rental equipment fees charged to workers and wages drop to less than $9,000 (in 2002 dollars) per year, barely enough to survive on.

At the time, Baltimore’s living wage, covering only city workers and contractors, was $8.85 per hour, or $18,408 per year in 2002 dollars and $23,000 in today’s dollars. A person cannot work to support a family at this wage, and without adequate welfare, public health insurace and other social supports it’s no wonder that upwards of 20% of the city was officially below the poverty line, a grossly low estimate of the actual levels of poverty.

Many of the workers at the Eutaw Street Shelter where the UWA was founded, an abandoned firehouse turned homeless shelter, worked day labour jobs during the baseball season at Camden Yards. Camden Yards is a publicly owned stadium and the home of the Baltimore’s Orioles, a team owned by Peter Angelos. Angelos is a billionaire lawyer who made his fortune in labour lawsuits over asbestos. He is one of the richest people in the state and has promoted himself a “friend of labour.” The cleaning contract was with Aramark, a national company specializing in government contracts. Aramark subcontracted stadium cleaning to day labour agencies, which in turn hired and fired homeless workers on a daily (and nightly) basis. Many workers were paid a flat rate, which sometimes meant workers made less than $4.00 an hour, not counting deductions and unpaid wait times.

2004-2007: Living Wage Campaign at Camden Yards
It was under these conditions that workers announced in 2004 that they were demanding to be paid a living wage, pegged to the city’s living wage rate. While not a city facility, the meaning of a living wage (based on the level required to survive) coupled with the legitimacy provided by a wage level set by the city’s wage commission made it an ideal basis for the demand. The failure of the state to pay above poverty wages was made apparent by the contradiction between the city’s wage the state’s effective wage through its contractors and subcontractors at Camden Yards.

The campaign to secure a living wage at Camden Yards required three years of worker organizing and community outreach. The state finally accepted worker demands on the eve of a worker imposed deadline that would be followed by a hunger strike. Fifteen workers and allies announced the hunger strike would begin unless the stadium agreed to worker demands for a living wage. The deadline and hunger strike were timed for when the Maryland state living wage, the first state living wage in the US, was to begin. Workers at the stadium weren’t included in this law, pointing to loophole in the state living wage that essentially exempted all workers who were paid less than a living wage already.

Once again, as with the city living wage, the moral meaning behind a living wage – not just the law itself – is what galvanized community support for the campaign. Workers were hunger striking not for a raise, but to have their wages raised to above-poverty levels. The meaning of a “living wage” and its opposite – a “poverty wage” – communicated the meaning of the campaign in way that a dollar amount could not. This helped workers effectively reach out to faith communities, community organizations and unions to explain the need for low-wage workers to be paid more than poverty wages.

The workers at Camden Yards secured the living wage, based on the even higher wage required under the state law. Out of this effort more than 800 low-wage workers were involved in a human rights campaign that connected low-wage workers to the rest of their community in powerful ways. Solidarity actions, outreach, community building and alliances were formed as part of the campaign. The concept of “living wages” helped from bridges and communicate values, which in turn built worker power that has continued to build since the initial campaign.

Shifting From Day Labour at Poverty Wages to Unionized Direct Employment at Living Wages
After the living wage campaign victory, workers approached AFSCME, a union of government employees, and offered to work with the union to form a union at the stadium. This would mean that workers who were once paid less than $4.50 an hour would now not only earn more than $11.00 an hour, but would also have a contract and continuing direct employment (the wage has since increased to $12.25 an hour. The temp agencies had been removed, and with a contract other working conditions could be addressed by workers. Workers could belong to both the UWA and the local union, under the principles of dual membership and solidarity.

Despite an aggressive campaign by the new cleaning contractor (the old one lost their contract as a result of the worker campaign for living wages), more than 80% of workers voted “yes” to the union drive and the local was formed. The contract was soon agreed to and workers, two years later, are still unionized, directly employed and earning the state living wage of $12.25 an hour, or $25,480 a year on an annualized basis.

Extending Living Wages to Workers in Retail and Restaurant Sectors
Workers did not stop with Camden Yards. They instead set their sites on figuring out how to extend the living wage to all low-wage workers in Maryland, working for both public and private employers. Workers are also committed to expanding campaigns to rights beyond the living wage, including the right to a wage worthy of human dignity, and the right to education and health care. That’s why workers marched in October 2008 (PDF) (one year after securing the living wage) from Camden Yards to the city’s premiere retail and tourist destination to declare the Inner Hall malls a “Human Rights Zone.”

Building on the living wage victory, UWA members are now demanding that the developers who control the city’s premiere indoor and outdoor mall agree to require that vendors pay workers at least a living wage, while also advancing the human rights to education and health care. Again, the concept of the living wage – first the city and now the state living wage – helps communicate the values behind the worker struggle.

Nobody should work for less than a living wage, as all families are entitled to housing, food, education, rest, leisure that cannot be realized without fair wages and adequate social welfare and effective income transfer programs. The struggle for the living wage becomes in part more possible when governments recognize that no organization, neither public nor private can morally justify the practice of paying workers at poverty levels.

Storytelling Activism: Media Literacy for Child Care Workers

Saturday December 11, 2010

Getting heard and being listened to can make a difference for building supportive communities.  At this half-day workshop we’ll learn how to be more effective communicators through use of news media, blogs, videos, advocacy, and other communication tools.

The workshop is facilitated by Tom Kertes. Tom has extensive experience in early education and care, including as a preschool teacher and director of a child care centre, as an ECE professor at Seneca College in Toronto, as Policy and Communications Advisor for Ontario’s self-regulatory College of Early Childhood Educators and as a professional story teller and science demonstrator at schools, conferences and museums across North America.

We will learn practical strategies and skills, including useful ideas and strategies for people who are interested in being an effective communicator for B.C.’s children and families.  All child care workers, including parents, grandparents, nannies, daycare providers, preschool teachers, and other early childhood educators are encouraged to join us for this informative and hands-on introduction to media literacy.

• $10 registration fee
• Saturday December 11, 2010 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
• Vancouver (Location TBA)
• To register: info@liberationlearning.com or call 604/600-4926

From Focus on the Learning (where I post information about workshops I offer):

Early Learning: From Play to Beyond Play
The evidence is in: Young children learn through play that’s meaningful and open-ended.  Parents and early childhood educators who understand and apply this knowledge can work together to support each child’s learning, ensuring that each child’s potential is fully realized.  This workshop covers the basics of play-based teaching and learning, explaining how teachers and parents can help children learn through a variety of play experiences – from entirely child-directed play to adult-supported play.

Once we understand the how and why of play and learning, other questions remain, which is why the workshop also goes “from play to beyond play.”  We address questions such as, what can and should be taught through play? And what are the best ways to support learning through play? Tom explores these questions through hands-0n illustrations, thoughtful discussions, back-and-forth dialogue and an accessible, lively and critical review of the latest research on early learning and play. read more

From Focus on the Learning (where I post information about workshops I offer):

ECE Learning Circles are workshops for early childhood educators on teaching math, reading and science to children ages 3-5. The workshops focus on practical strategies and skills for using games, stories, projects and other activities to help support children’s learning.  Information is presented in an organized, clear and usable format and includes understandable explanations of basic math, language and science concepts. Workshops also cover related vocabulary (intended to support early childhood educators who speak English as a second language). read more

The first ECE Learning Circle will be in September…

Numbers (Saturday September 25, 2010 10 AM to 3 PM) Skills, concepts and theories related to numbers are foundational to many other areas of math. This workshop focuses on dozens of ways to understand and apply number theory, including counting, learning number-names and extending numbers to other learning areas. (Limited to 12 participants.) $10 per person.

CCPA’s Seth Klein has posted an update on BC’s child poverty rates, comparing to other parts of Canada and also to provinces that have adopted policy reduction plans to improve levels of child well-being:

A week ago, I appeared before the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. The committee, to its credit, had decided to spend a day hearing witnesses on the subject of child poverty, and what BC could do to make a difference.

Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue gets lost in a fruitless debate about how to measure poverty. The simple truth is that no measure is perfect. But by whatever measure one uses ­­–– the LICO (low-income cut-off) before-tax, the LICO after-tax, or the Market Basket Measure –– BC has the highest overall poverty rate and the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So we need a plan to change this reality. read more

There’s an interesting read (pdf) on how to understand poverty levels in Canada by John Stapleton and Richard Shillington. The report is released by the Metcalf Foundation, which says of the report:

The paper is about the challenges facing citizens when presented with statistics on poverty, and emphasizes the need to question the implications and assumptions underlying various poverty measures. The authors look at how we measure poverty levels, the working poor, child benefits, unemployment and Employment Insurance.  They provide some basic information about what measures are used and illustrate how different approaches to the data can colour social realities.   As Stapleton and Shillington write, “… if we don’t make sense of poverty measures, we will limit our ability as a society to make good decisions about poverty and related issues.”   We hope this short paper will stimulate thoughtful debate about poverty and its measurement among Canadians. read more

Download a PDF of the report.

From the Globe and Mail:

Once able to boast about its high world ranking for low infant mortality, Canada has now dropped from sixth to 24th place – just above Hungary and Poland.

The death rate of infants less than one year of age – 5.1 per 1,000 live births – has been called “shockingly high” and translates into 1,881 mortalities in 2007, according to the most recent data collected by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. read more

From The Tyee:

After a decade of structural shortfalls, perhaps it’s no wonder we’re doing badly. But we weren’t doing much better even in the relatively good years of the 1990s. Most of the students in that decade had, after all, been hurt by the cuts of the Socred restraint era, when Bill Bennett downloaded unwelcome costs onto the kids then in school.

Until we decide as a province that education is a true and continuing priority, the schools will go on suffering a financial brownout: enough money to function, at the cost of the poorest families. And that in turn will cause an intellectual and economic brownout for all of us that will continue indefinitely into the 21st century. read more

From the Globe and Mail:

In the face of censure from the formidable Ted Hughes, B.C.’s former conflict of interest commissioner, the provincial government has backed down on its efforts to dilute the powers of the independent watchdog for children – at least temporarily.

The government said Tuesday it will accept Mr. Hughes’s offer of mediation in its long-running dispute with the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.

But Allan Seckel, the head of the civil service, said Mr. Hughes won’t have long to find a solution. The government still intends to pass a law to curb the representative’s authority if talks don’t resolve the conflict before the end of the legislative session on June 3. read more