Why Hunger? -The truth is that American workers are the most
productive in the world. US worker productivity increased 80 percent
from 1973 to 2011, eight times as much as hourly worker compensation.
The average worker is responsible for $63,885 of wealth per year. Yet
more than a third of households make less than $30,000 a year. We have
the highest percentage of low wage workers in the world–almost 25
percent. The people who bring us our food–farm workers, food
processers, restaurant workers and grocery workers–usually make
poverty wages. The people who we trust to take care of our children,
parents, grandparents and sometimes ourselves when we are sick or
disabled; people who work in nursing homes and hospitals; nannies,
childcare and Head Start workers–all of these crucial workers are all
too often making poverty wages. Fifty percent of personal care workers
live in poverty. Most of them are women, and 40 percent of
female-headed households live in poverty.
Although we have lost millions of jobs to automation, the computer
age, and to countries overseas, most of the remaining low-wage jobs in
the US cannot be sent to another country and will not be replaced by a
machine. The people doing these jobs have families to support and
often have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Most do not
have health insurance, sick days or pensions. Few are represented by
unions and so they do not dare to challenge their employers when they
are treated unfairly or even have wages and tips stolen from them.
There are countless millions more who work in sales and services for
companies that have low wage and minimal benefit policies. Most of
these companies are highly profitable and say they cannot afford to
pay workers more but they pay their CEOs and other high level
employees outrageously high salaries even when business goes down.
Raising the minimum wage to ten dollars an hour and indexing it to
inflation would be a good first step to repair our economy and help
millions of families out of poverty. Enforcement of wage laws and
prosecution of wage theft would add billions of hard-earned dollars to
the incomes of the lowest earning families. Allowing workers to join
or form unions without harassment or unfair dismissal has proven to
enrich the lowest paid workers without bankrupting their companies.
Please read full at:
http://blog.whyhunger.org/2013/01/a-fair-day%E2%80%99s-work-for-a-fair-day%E2%80%99s-pay-how-to-reduce-poverty-and-fix-the-economy/
