‘Living Wage’ Debate Should Focus on Philanthropic Values

To the Editor:

The May 2 article “Paying a High Price,” by Michael Anft, discusses the negative impact that living-wage laws are having on the financial stability of some charities.

While that may be true, I think Mr. Anft misses a larger and more important point. Living-wage laws are not the problem. Mr. Anft falsely assumes a paradigm of scarce financial resources resulting in small interest groups being pitted against other small interest groups.

There is no shortage of financial resources in our society. The problem is a pervasive societal mentality of everyone looking out only for himself or herself, selfishness, and hoarding. The wealthiest 1 percent of this country have steadily gotten wealthier over the past 10 to 20 years. Heads of corporations make millions and millions of dollars a year.

What if there were a new paradigm where people were encouraged to feel connected to and care for one another? What if corporations were mandated to follow social-responsibility guidelines requiring them to run their businesses in accordance with ecological and community concerns? What if there were a cap on salaries, and resources were used to benefit all, not just a privileged few? This would not be socialism. This would be a capitalist society structured around the values of community, connectedness, and caring. Instead of arguing over 50 cents more an hour for employee salaries, I think time and resources would be better spent coming up with ways to help change the values and direction of our society.

Susan Barnett
Mill Valley, Calif.

To the Editor:

As a board member of the Needmor Fund, I am proud of our support of many of the more than 80 living-wage campaigns that have swept the country over the last decade.

I would like to reassure John Doyle, of the Employment Policies Institute, that we have not been “duped into helping spread a union-building movement across the country.” Strange as it may seem to Mr. Doyle, we think that unions are good for America. We believe the decline of unions as well as the privatization of public services have contributed to the current crises, in which more than 25 percent of working Americans are living in poverty. We don’t believe that unregulated market forces have or will provide a decent and dignified standard of living for low-wage workers; we think organized citizens and organized workers will.

Needmor is excited to have the opportunity to support the building of bridges between religious, labor, and community groups that share a concern for the welfare of working Americans. We are happy that successful living-wage campaigns create coalitions that support organizing efforts by health-care, custodial, food-service, and hospitality workers. We dream of an international labor movement that would include workers of all races and national origins in democratic unions.

While we are sympathetic to the pressures felt by nonprofit service providers to either pay higher wages or cut caseloads, we think working people can identify their own self-interest. If workers were paid living wages and had adequate health care, the caseloads of the nonprofits would decline dramatically. Many social-service workers are themselves living below the poverty line and without health care.

Needmor is among many foundations that support the reform and renewal of the American labor movement. We are members of the Neighborhood Funders Working Group on Labor and Community, which provides donor education on these issues. So, Mr. Doyle, as the old song says, “You can’t fool me, I’m sticking to the union.”

Sarah Stranahan
Trustee, Chair of Finance Committee
Needmor Fund
Boulder, Colo.

To the Editor:

We would like to add several points to the living-wage discussion initiated by The Chronicle’s stories, beginning with the evidence that compelled us to make support of the living wage a priority. The living wage addresses one of the most significant sources of the national poverty problem — low wages that provide men and women working full time no chance of working their way out of poverty.

When President Roosevelt introduced the minimum wage nearly 70 years ago, it was $3 higher an hour — in adjusted dollars — than it is today. The federal minimum wage now pays a gross annual salary of under $11,000, a sum insufficient to rent the average two-bedroom apartment in any major city in the country. In America today, a hard day’s work no longer guarantees a fair day’s pay.

Relatively small amounts of foundation funding have helped begin to rectify that wrong and have provided excellent return on investment. Grants of $110,000 made by the McKay Foundation last year yielded a $120-million annual increase in wages and benefits to home-care and other low-wage workers in the city and county of San Francisco.

We also feel the need to contest an assertion made by an anti-living-wage representative in The Chronicle story concerning the Santa Monica living wage. Foundations that support the living wage are not being “duped.” Nor is the living wage a front for unionization. The living wage is a new, innovative, and promising strategy for meeting the basic needs of working Americans, fewer and fewer of whom are represented by the labor unions that for much of the last century protected workers’ wages.

If philanthropy is to live up to its reputation as “America’s passing gear,” foundations must be willing to take advantage of new developments that hold the hope of bringing us closer to achieving our most ambitious goals of a fair and equitable democratic society. This would include a whole array of initiatives related to livable-wage jobs, such as access to health benefits, supportive services, child care, education and training for welfare-to-work job seekers, accountable development, and community organizing.

We recognize the fund-raising challenges faced by nonprofit social-service providers as they try to raise the wages of their staff to meet new living-wage criteria. We applaud collaborations between living-wage organizers and local nonprofit agencies that may ease the financial burden of nonprofits as they do so.

We also look forward to the implementation of an ever-greater number of living-wage ordinances that promise to reduce the number of people seeking the social-service assistance that philanthropy has historically funded. It is impossible for us to view a decline in demand among social-service providers as anything but positive.

Rob McKay
Executive Director
McKay Foundation
San Francisco

Torie Osborn
Executive Director
Liberty Hill Foundation
Santa Monica, Calif.

Jack Shakely
President
California Community Foundation
Los Angeles