What are “Living Wage” Ordinances?
The living wage movement takes as it theme the reasonable position that no one who works for a living should be poor. Thus, wages paid to even the lowest wage workers, should, with full-time work, lift them out of poverty. But how does the movement achieve this goal? Perhaps the most obvious way to meet this objective would be to push for a federal minimum wage that was high enough to lift full-time workers up to a decent standard of living. However, while those in the living wage movement certainly support a higher federal minimum, given their limited resources, community organizing backgrounds, and recognition of current political realities, most of their energies have been directed at municipal ordinances. Essentially, these are rules that set a wage level below which certain employers cannot pay their workers. Thus, they are a close relative of federal minimum wage regulations, which set a national floor on wages (some states set their minimum wage above the federal level, but they
