A recent episode of the online news program "The Young Turks " took a look at a new fast-food restaurant in Detroit, Moo Cluck Moo, that is doing the right thing and paying its workers a living wage. While the minimum wage in Detroit is $7.40, Moo Cluck Moo pays its workers $12 per hour and is planning to offer benefits soon. The company's owner says that he started paying the higher wage because "it was the right thing to do."
Although African American workers are significantly better educated than they were three decades ago, they're actually less likely to be in good jobs, according to a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
Many U.S. workers don’t have jobs—nearly 13 million. Less known, however, is that many more don’t have good jobs— fewer than one-quarter of America’s workforce, according to a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research ( CEPR ). The center defines a good job as one that pays at least $18.50 an hour, or $37,000 per year, equal to the inflation-adjusted earnings of the typical male worker in 1979. A good job also includes employer-provided health insurance and a retirement plan (click on chart at left to expand).
The lack of available good jobs is not new. As CEPR finds, compared with 1979, the U.S. economy has lost about one-third (28 percent to 38 percent) of its capacity to generate good jobs.
But why?
MIT's Paul Osterman has a provocative piece in the Boston Review about some myths standing in the way of turning lousy, low-wage jobs into good jobs. The convention wisdom, he says, is "to let the economy generate jobs of whatever quality firms choose and then, if necessary, compensate by enabling people to avoid the bad ones or by shoring up people who are stuck. The nature of available jobs is a given." His arguments bolster the union movement's case that we need direct intervention in the labor market to make bad jobs into good jobs through collective bargaining, labor standards, public-sector leadership, training and career ladders and more.
Thousands of labor, environmental, business and community representatives will discuss the best ways to build a sustainable economy that creates good green jobs across the country at the 2011 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference Feb. 8–10 in Washington, D.C.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
Click here »
Tell us about the good stuff happening where you live and work.
