Living Wage

Recently, Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Richard Gephardt introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage by $1 per hour by the year 2000. Yet even if the bill passes, according to arguments presented here, many minimum-wage workers will still live below the poverty line. Talk of alternatives among policy makers has focused on the ""living wage"" initiative, which would require companies that receive government contracts to compensate their workers in sufficient pay and benefits to raise them above the poverty level. On the side usually championed by Democrats are Pollin, a professor of economics and codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Luce, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The authors favor implementing the initiative on a national level and bolster their arguments with extensive research, often attempting to show why conservatives who oppose the measure are shortsighted. Those not passionately interested in this issue will find the writing dry and rife with policy terminology. This is more of an academic study than a general overview of the political and sociological implications of such an initiative. However, according to the authors, the core findings on which the book is based most likely played a role in living wage legislation that was recently adopted in Los Angeles; just so, the book may help other activists raise the pitch of the debate. Editor, Matt Weiland. (Aug.)