West Virginia lawmakers are questioning if the state’s $8.75 an hour minimum wage is enough to live on.
Preston County resident Lucien Funk,16, was serving breakfast at the state Capitol this week. Lucien said he helps support his single mom and siblings by driving to neighboring Maryland for part time work that pays a little better.
Lucien said he learned first hand the adult challenges of a minimum wage job. “People out there with families, they gotta get these jobs, they can’t feed their kids, then the kids go hungry, it hurts,” Funk said.
Sen. Hannah Geffert, D-Berkeley, is sponsoring a bill that would raise West Virginia’s minimum wage from $8.75 to $10.50 an hour. She said the state needs to keep up with skyrocketing inflation.
“You can’t work without child care, it’s costly. You need clothes, a car perhaps, and some people have to make decisions,” Geffert said. “Do I go to work and lose money or stay home and take care of my children?”
But Sen. Dave Sypolt, R-Preston, believes free market economics is driving jobs and wages, prompting no need to raise the minimum wage.
“Be it fast food or Walmart, they are paying above minimum wage just to find labor,” Sypolt said. “So, as the economy grows and there’s a shortage of labor, there’s going to be an increase in wages and salaries.”
More than half the states across America, including four out of five of West Virginia’s neighboring states, are preparing to raise their minimum wages.
Del. Cody Thompson, D-Randolph, introduced a companion bill that raises West Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour by 2025. Thompson said when neighboring states increase their minimum wages, West Virginia’s market will decline.
“They can cross the border, get $3, $4 or $5 more an hour, it puts our people at a disadvantage,” Thompson said.
Lucien Funk said without state wage reform, he’s out of here.
“I know a bunch of kids that say ‘As soon as I graduate, I’m moving out of Terra Alta’,” Funk said.
West Virginia’s minimum wage has been $8.75 an hour since January 2016.
Speakers from West Virginia gathered to demand action from U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, joining a Monday press conference in Charleston sponsored by the national Poor People’s Campaign.
Their grassroots effort built on a series of full-page newspaper ads taken out in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel and The Journal of Martinsburg. The ads demanded Manchin support a $15 an hour minimum wage and the John Lewis Voting Rights act, along with ending the Congressional filibuster.
Rev. William J. Barber, one of the co-chairs of the group, said the organization plans to up the pressure.
“We are launching a national call-in and we are in serious conversations and preparations about nonviolent civil disobedience stand-ins, sit-ins, et cetera,” he said.
The speakers set up a video camera outside of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce offices, where they said much of the dark money in politics comes from. They also shared Manchin’s Washington, D.C. office number, encouraging the organization’s supporters to call and make their voices heard.
Manchin responded to their efforts through a spokesperson. “Senator Manchin appreciates The Poor People’s Campaign advocacy efforts, which is why he met with the group several months ago. He continues to listen to the concerns West Virginians share and seek solutions to the issues facing our state.”
Manchin has opposed a $15 federal minimum wage and an elections bill that he said he couldn’t support because it lacked bipartisan support.
Senate Democrats unveiled a pared-back elections bill last week.
Manchin long has defended the filibuster as many of his Senate colleagues have shifted on the issue.
Representatives of Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign met online with U.S. Senator Joe Manchin yesterday. They encouraged him to support the $15 an hour federal minimum wage.
Several West Virginians on the video call shared personal stories of their struggles — both before and during the pandemic.
“If you’ve never lived in poverty, you have no idea mentally, physically, emotionally what it does to you and wears on you,” said Pam Garrison of Fayette County.
West Virginia’s minimum wage is currently $8.75 an hour. Manchin has opposed raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Raising the federal minimum wage would not automatically raise the minimum wage in West Virginia.
“Having grown up in the small coal-mining town of Farmington, Sen. Manchin understands the challenges facing working West Virginians and small business owners,” said Sam Runyon, a spokesman for the senator. “He appreciated the opportunity to meet with Bishop Barber and members of the Poor People’s Campaign to discuss the issues most important to them. As always, he encourages West Virginians to exercise their First Amendment right by continuing to reach out to their elected representatives to share their concerns.”
Manchin made no indication that his opinion on the matter had been swayed in the call.
The Poor People’s Campaign plans to hold a rally outside Manchin’s Charleston office on Feb. 22 (next Monday) at 3 p.m.
The Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign — two nonprofits with a mission to address social justice in the US — organized a Moral Mondays online event this week in Charleston.
The object of the virtual gathering was to pressure U.S. Senator Joe Manchin to support the $15 an hour federal minimum wage.
“We call them Moral Mondays, as we push an agenda for the healing of the nation,” Rev. William Barber said.
Barber is the president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign. He participated in the virtual event.
“Over 350,000 West Virginians who work make less than a living wage,” he said in comments before the rally. “We know that the minimum wage is a poverty wage.”
The coronavirus relief package currently before Congress is galvanizing groups to redress the issue of minimum wage. Senator Manchin is on record supporting a raise to $11 an hour.
News reports suggest that the $15 an hour federal minimum wage is not likely to remain in the relief package and will be taken up in a later bill. A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates the change could move 900,000 Americans out of poverty, but it would also cause the economy to lose 1.4 million jobs and increase the federal budget deficit by $50 billion over the next 10 years.
A spokesperson for Senator Manchin issued a statement reacting to the event, saying that Manchin “has always encouraged West Virginians to peacefully exercise their first amendment right and appreciates hearing directly from them about the issues most important to them.”
Monday’s event was originally scheduled as an in-person march in Charleston, ending at Machin’s Charleston offices, but the groups made the event virtual because of poor weather. Barber says he plans to come to West Virginia at a later date.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the current $7.25 rate, which has not changed in a decade. The bill is unlikely to clear the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he will not take it up.
But the vote adds energy to election-season debate about a living wage, an issue that resonates with tens of thousands in the Ohio Valley, where low-wage jobs have been taking the place of higher-earning ones lost to declines in the mining and manufacturing sectors.
In eastern Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District – among the poorest in the country –one analysis of the $15 an-hour wageshows that some 93,700 people, or 42 percent of the workers there, would see an increase in wages.
Credit Becca Schimmel / Ohio Valley ReSource
/
Ohio Valley ReSource
Eric McIntosh works for minimum wage at a sandwich shop in Morehead, KY.
Eric McIntosh is one of them.
“I’m from eastern Kentucky, I am 24, and I work for a sandwich shop for minimum wage,” McIntosh said. He lives in Morehead, in an apartment above a consignment shop. McIntosh wants to see an increase in the minimum wage, so he can live a better life and pay to attend the trade school down the road. But for now, he worries about more day-to-day concerns.
“The anxiety of poverty, you’re nervous about every single check that you get, if that’s going to be enough, and that keeps you up at night and that just makes your work even worse,” he said.
At the current minimum wage, McIntosh could still wind up well below the federal poverty level for families, even working full time.
A recentreport from the Congressional Budget Officeshows increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour could lift about 1.3 million people out of poverty and boost the wages of 17 million workers. But the CBO also warns that such a wage hike could result in more than one million lost jobs nationwide and could diminish overall income for others.
Vicious Cycle
McIntosh described a cycle of low pay and job-related costs that keep him on a treadmill of earning just enough to keep his employment, but never enough to get ahead.
“Certain jobs require that you pay for your uniform,” he explained. But even maintaining the work uniform becomes another cost and another potential trap. “You can’t upkeep your uniform, you end up getting fired.”
He said many workers end up using high-interest, payday loan services to get by.
“But when all your money has to go to your bills, your back-pay because you had to take out a payday loan,” he said. “That’s going to all the credit at the payday loan.”
Even just getting to and from his job is hard. Transportation is a common problem for people working minimum wage in a rural area. A report from the American Public Transportation Association found that while rural population is declining, ridership in rural areas has been increasing.
McIntosh said he’s often had to rely on others for his transportation, and he has seen his co-workers lose jobs because they couldn’t afford a minor car repair.
“And if people have more spending money, we’re going to generate more jobs,” he said. “We’re going to buy more products. I guarantee you if I made $15 an hour, I would actually buy a car for once.”
He said he would also invest in his education and work skills.
“To get ahead in life, to be able to use these jobs as a kickoff point, you have to have some money left over to be able to reinvest in yourself,” he said.
Employer Concerns
Opponents of the minimum wage increase focus on the costs to employers and the potential for job cuts. The conservativeHeritage Foundation arguesthat small businesses would not be able to increase revenue enough to cover the cost of higher wages, and employers would be forced to increase prices or cut costs by eliminating positions.
Fred Baumann is one of those small businessmen who would be affected. He’s the chairman of the board forBaumann Paper Co., a Lexington-based company now in its third generation of Baumann family management.
“My dad started the company in 1950,” he said. His daughter now runs the business, which distributes paper, plastic and other sanitary supplies. I met him at one of the many businesses his company supplies, a hotel and restaurant.
Baumann said the company already pays many employees in the $14 to $15 an hour range. But if the federal minimum wage increases they’ll feel the pressure to increase their workers’ pay.
“We’re paying what the market demands us to pay in order to get the competent workers and to retain them,” he said.
When we first spoke Baumann didn’t know what the federal minimum wage was. He said he was under the impression that it was around $10 an hour. It is $7.25 in Kentucky. (In West Virginia it is $8.75, and $8.55 in Ohio.) He worries that a much higher wage will make workers less motivated.
“People have to have a certain amount of initiative rather than stuff being handed to them,” he said. “My perspective is, if you automatically get 15 bucks an hour, then where’s the incentive?”
He said his company would have to look at whether they’d be better off investing in more automation.
The CBO report offered a range of possible outcomes regarding the potential for lost jobs, and noted that the predictions came with a high degree of uncertainty. The median forecast shows 1.3 million potential job losses. A worst-case scenario shows 3.7 million jobs could be lost.
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank,conducted a separate analysisthat questioned those job loss figures.
EPI Economist Ben Zipperer said the challenges for businesses are not as large as the “scare stories” about raising the minimum wage might have some people think. He said some of the job loss from increasing the wage can be explained by lower turnover.
“So when you raise minimum wage you actually reduce worker turnover, and makes it easier for businesses to retain workers because they’re now paying higher wages,” he said.
The CBO report also showed that it’s possible there would be no change in unemployment due to a $15 an hour minimum wage, and Zipperer said that lines up with most of the research that’s been done on the minimum wage. He said if all businesses are forced to increase the pay for their workers, it might increase a company’s ability to compete.
“It’s a lot easier for a restaurant to raise its prices a little bit when all restaurants are having to do the same thing in order to accommodate a minimum wage increase,” he said.
The EPA analysis also shows that the Ohio Valley region would see some of the most pronounced wage increases in the country as a result of a $15 minimum wage by 2024.
For example, the EPI report predicts that in large portions of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and southeast Ohio, roughly 40 percent of workers would see some increase in wages.
EPI says some workers employed year-round in Kentucky could see an increase in their average annual income of about $4,000. In West Virginia and Ohio, workers might see about $3,000 more in average annual income.
Zipperer said that could help offset the region’s high inequality.
“When you raise minimum wages, reduce poverty, raise family income at the bottom you’re actually reducing income inequality,” he said.
Click for an interactive map from Economic Policy Institute, which advocates for a higher minimum wage.
Rising Inequality
In late 2017, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights for the United Nations, Philip Alston, conducteda fact-finding tourof some places affected by extreme poverty. But those weren’t in some developing nation, they were in the United States, including a visit to communities in the Ohio Valley.
Alston’sreport to the UN Human Rights Councilfound that of the 40 million poor Americans, more than five million live in “Third World conditions of absolute poverty.” It also showed that Americans live shorter, sicker lives than do citizens of all other rich democracies, and that the U.S. has the greatest income inequality of all industrialized nations.
The report ties those conditions to stagnated wages that force many working people to seek government assistance for food. The share of households that have a wage-earner but also receive nutrition assistance rose from about 20 percent in 1989 to more than 30 per cent in 2015.
And the report found that the average annual wage of the bottom 50 percent of earners has been stagnant since 1980.
Eric McIntosh didn’t have those sorts of facts and figures to describe his life as a minimum wage worker. For him, it’s something he feels and lives every day.
“I wouldn’t know how to be able to explain it or show it to these people,” he said. “This is not a thing that I can reduce to words because it’s not something that I’ve had happen to me in words, I’ve had it happen to me in experience.
On this West Virginia Morning, despite legislation passed in 2017 that allowed cannabis to be legal for medical use in West Virginia, officials say they’re still years away from the first sale. That’s — at least in part — because of a hangup with finding a banking solution to get around federal law.
State health officials say they also have to implement permitting and licensing for patients and those who want to start businesses within the industry. Dave Mistich gives us a look at the stalled program and what’s needed to get it off the ground.
Also on today’s show, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office shows increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour could boost the wages of 17 million workers. As the Ohio Valley ReSource’s Becca Schimmel reports, it could have a big impact in the Ohio Valley, where low-wage service sector jobs are increasing.
And thousands of Ohio Valley residents live within one city block of highly pressurized underground natural gas storage wells, according to new research from Harvard University. Energy and environment reporter Brittany Patterson has more.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.
