The economic recovery since the Great Recession has been good for big business, but has left low-wage workers behind.
It’s a problem that affects all of us. Taxpayers are shelling out an estimated $1.7 billion each year to subsidize corporations that that rely on a low-wage workforce assistance. Meanwhile, these same corporations are bringing in record profits.
Raising the wage will provide a much-needed economic boost to working families that struggle to put food on the table and make ends meet while reducing taxpayer handouts to out-of-state corporations.
The high cost of low wages
In 2013, 29% of all the job vacancies in Oregon were for positions paying less than $10 an hour. [1]
Over 600,000 Oregonians are currently employed in low-wage work. That’s roughly one-third of the state’s workforce. About 200,000 of those workers receive public assistance.
Large, profitable corporations in retail, fast food, and health care employ the largest share of low-wage workers using public assistance.
Because so many low-wage workers need to rely on public benefits to pay for necessities, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the corporations that employ them to the tune of $1.7 billion every year.
Jobs that provide low wages and no benefits place additional pressure on our social safety net, driving up costs for taxpayers and leaving families struggling just to get by.
Restoring local control
Across the country, individual communities are recognizing the need for a higher minimum wage to support working families and grow local economies. But as the rules are currently written, towns and cities in Oregon are prohibited from raising wages for working families.
Over a decade ago, corporate interests and their lobbyists in Salem developed a strategy to hamstring local governments that want to raise standards for worker compensation and benefits.
They blocked Oregon cities from setting their own minimum wage, instead imposing a one-size-fits-all approach to lawmaking and stripping local leaders of the ability to determine what works on the ground in their communities.
To ensure that our economy works for all of us, is critical that Oregon restore local control to allow communities to set a higher minimum wage above and beyond the statewide floor.
[1] http://lerc.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2014-Oregon-Workforce-Report-The-High-Cost-of-Low-Wages-in-Oregon.pdf
