Low Wage Workers

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of New York). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Progressive Caucus, I am here to present a conversation that we would like to share with the American public, which is the plight of low-wage workers.

The Progressive Caucus here in Congress has worked on this issue for many years. This last month, when Members went home and worked in the district for the month, we joined many of these low-wage workers in a day of strike as a way to present their case to the American people.

Too many people are paid too little for the work they do. That harms families in this country; that depresses the economy in this country; and that makes more people have to go to government assistance because they're simply not paid enough for the work that they're doing.

We all know that economy has had a lot of tough times in the last several years, but things are getting better. The problem is they are only getting better for some.

We know that corporate profits have continued to break records, while Americans are working harder and getting paid less. We know that the stock markets are close to all time highs and corporate profits are booming. The $200 billion-a-year fast food industry is doing extremely well in this country, and our workers are more than pulling their weight to help in these successes.

Over the past 30 years, the productivity of the American worker has increased 85 percent, however, the salaries that they get paid simply haven't kept up in pace.

Mr. Speaker, why is the economy stuck? Why aren't these people making more money? Why is it that while so many who are in the top 1 percent, the top 10 percent, are doing extremely well, somehow those financial returns haven't trickled down to the rest of the economy?

We know the incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by more than 31 percent since 2009, just in the last several years--a 31 percent increase--yet incomes for the bottom 99 percent have moved less than 1 percent. That inequality is what is causing the real problem that we have.

In order to have the economy truly prosper and truly recover, we have to make sure that all people are benefiting and that all people see an additional wage. Wages have been stagnant for a generation, as the minimum wage right now in real terms is $1 less than it was in 1980. But yet the fastest-growing jobs in the economy are also those same jobs--they're the lowest paid. Fast food, retail, home health, child care, and security jobs are growing, but they don't pay enough to cover the basic necessities like food, clothing, and rent.

So how much is enough? Many of these people are working across the country at $7.25 an hour. Now, if you take that times 2,080, which is the number of full-time equivalent hours in a year, that's about $15,080 a year for a full-time worker on minimum wage. For a couple both earning that, that's a little over $30,000. If you have a family, a couple of children, you're not even close to the median income of $51,144 in this country.

But what makes this number even tougher is when you look at the actual cost of living. The Economic Policy Institute has said that the cost per year of maintaining a modest standard of living for a typical family of four--they figured that out across the country, including in my home city of Madison, Wisconsin, home of Bucky Badger--and these numbers are written in stone--this is what the costs are on average:

If you live in Madison, Wisconsin, your average costs are likely over $75,000 a year for a family of four. That's a breakdown of housing is about $10,668; food another $9,048; child care for that family $18,312; transportation $7,284; other necessities a little over $5,000; and their taxes are about $6,900.

Now, that's for Madison, Wisconsin, the middle of America. But what about other places? Well, Milwaukee, a bigger city, but still in my State, $74,000 is that expense. In New York City, it's over $94,000 for that same low-wage worker, that same minimum-wage worker. And one of the best deals for a major city across the country, Atlanta, it's still almost $62,000 a year, almost double what an average couple could make on minimum wage.

Now, I know some of the myths that are out there. People say a minimum-wage worker is someone who's living at home, probably going to school, under 18, just for pocket change, right? That's the myth. We've heard that more than enough.

Well, here's the reality. According to the Economic Policy Institute, what is that minimum-age worker actually? What's their demographic? What's the profile? Well, first of all, 88 percent are over 20 years of age--88 percent. So really it's a small token percent that is that average high school student making minimum wage. A third of them are over 40 years old. So a full third of the lowest-paid workers are over 40 years old. The average age, 35 years old. Twenty-eight percent of those lowest-paid workers have children. So when we talk about that family of four, we are talking about it because the statistics are there. Twenty-eight percent have children. Fifty-five percent of them are full-time workers. So this isn't something on the side for some extra pocket change. This is the full-time job that they have at that minimum wage. On average, over half of them earn half of their family income based on that minimum wage job. Over 43 percent of them have some kind of college education.

So that's the reality. When you look at that worker, that's the real demographic. This isn't that high school kid staying with their parents making some extra money so they can go buy another CD or some new toy. This in reality is the living sustenance for many of these workers across the country.

Yet, if you look at just one of the fast food companies, their CEO makes 580 times what that low-income worker is making at that very same company. Now, if you just raise that wage to $10.10, you would literally lift 6 million of these people out of poverty--6 million people, you could literally have a significant change in their lives.

Now, let's look at the economy and what this means. We know that while wages have been stagnant, the price of housing in the United States has doubled since the early '80s. Safe, adequate housing has become less and less affordable to someone who makes minimum wage.

But let's look at some of the consequences of that person making $7.25 an hour. First of all, it's bad for families. If you can't support your family and your children on that wage, like we just talked about--rent, food, medicine, housing--the most basic costs that you have are more than they could possibly make on that.

Second, it's bad for the deficit. Low-wage workers often qualify for food stamps and other public assistance while big profitable corporations are forcing taxpayers to subsidize their low wages and burden our economy.

In Wisconsin alone, there is one employer that has a majority of folks who are on our low-income assistance health program. A majority of folks who should be getting that support from their job instead are on our public assistance program for health insurance.

Now, thankfully, the Affordable Care Act is going to make sure that more and more people in this country have access to health care. But the reality is we are subsidizing those people right now, each and every one of us, because those big corporations that are having record profits and CEOs making hundreds of times what that low-wage worker makes are doing well and yet we are paying for it.

Also, it's bad for the economy. That means in the local economy if you don't have people spending money in this current economy, that's what's holding us back. I truly believe a rising tide lifts all boats. If we increase that wage, whether it be $9 that the President proposed, $10.10, $15, whatever wage we ultimately have a debate about, you raise that, that money that that low-wage worker has is not going to be invested, it's not going to be held in savings. It's very likely going to be spent in the economy just to get by on the day-to-day expenses. But that builds the entire economy. If they are able to occasionally go to a movie or maybe go to a restaurant, not the fast food one they work at, and have a dinner, that's going to help stimulate the economy for everyone. So, again, we hold back our economy by those low-wage workers not making more.

Finally, I think what this country really is about is opportunity. This takes away that opportunity to grow the middle class from the middle out and from the bottom up. How do we help those people get that chance, that opportunity for their family that many of us have, but they're not able to because they're stuck at that job at $7.25 an hour, yet they have the expenses we all have?

Now, at the same time, during this, CEO pay has skyrocketed. We know that the average CEO between 1978 and 2012, their compensation grew, according to an article in The Huffington Post, 876 percent. Now, during the same period, worker compensation grew 5.4 percent.

Income inequality is a huge problem in this country. If we don't address it at some point, these stagnant wages that haven't kept up with the cost of living, haven't kept up with the cost of housing, we are going to have real and serious problems for our economy for each and every person.

In fact, the average CEO right now makes 354 times what that low-wage worker makes--354 times. That fast food worker, their CEO made 580 times. But we have to make sure that everyone prospers in this country, and everyone prospers in this economy.

We have to make sure that families can cover their basic needs, that we can lessen the need for public assistance and help reduce our deficit. We can put more money in the pockets of workers instead of corporate CEOs and, thus, more money in the pockets of our small businesses, which are going to benefit when they're spending that additional money. We can lift up our local economies and, by doing that, lift up our local communities--having safer, better, healthier communities by people having more money.

That's why the members of the Progressive Caucus stood with those low- wage workers in this last month, in August, when they took a day of strike. They didn't go to work for part of the day or for the whole day in order to illustrate the problems that they're facing, and we across the country stood with them to support a fair wage for a full day's work. In more than 50 cities across the country, members of the Progressive Caucus and other Democrats joined with these low-paid workers to make sure we talked about their stories. I'd just like to read a couple of quotes from people who participated in this.

One was a gentleman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was 45 years old, a low-paid worker, and this is what he said:

I'm a maintenance man at McDonald's. When my grandbabies come over on the weekend, I spend on them, making sure that they eat and are comfortable. I eat McDonald's the last 2 weeks of the month because I have no food left.

Is that the America that, I think, we value; the land of opportunity so that every family can prosper?

Let me read another one. This is from a worker in New York City, and she said:

On some days, I've been up for 48 hours straight, and McDonald's makes billions of dollars every year.

Now, think about that. That person, who very likely may have children--28 percent of those people who are making minimum wage do--was up for 48 hours straight. How do you do that? How do you make that work?

So we have tried to stand up on behalf of the low-paid workers and say it's time we address this issue. The President said we need to raise the minimum wage. Democrats have said we need to raise the minimum wage. People across the country--business owners and others--have said that it's time to increase the minimum wage. I served 14 years in the Wisconsin legislature before I was here. Every single time that we increased the minimum wage in Wisconsin we had more people enter the workforce.

As the statistics from the Economic Policy Institute said, this isn't about high school kids earning a little extra pocket change while living at home, which is 12 percent of that population. This is about getting real people into the workforce, earning money, putting it back into the economy, supporting their families, and doing exactly what we need to do with the economy.

When we did this across the country, we were very, very fortunate to have someone who has been a real role model for many of us who are progressives across the country in elected office, someone from the city of Chicago or outside the city of Chicago, but a real leader in the progressive movement in Congress and, again, someone who has been a real leader for many of us for the many years that we've been in government.

I would like to yield, Mr. Speaker, to Representative Jan Schakowsky from the Chicago area.

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