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America

Vol. 195 No. 5, Whole No. 4742

ART BY HARRIS HAMMERSMITH

August 28September 4, 2006

The Living Wage and

Catholic Social Teaching
B Y W I L L I A M P. Q U I G L E Y

Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious
population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working
men and women a fair days pay for a fair days work.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

still be poor? Few argue that they should. Yet

the federal minimum wage remains a shocking $5.15 an hour. Advocates
for living wages point to the Santa Fe local minimum wage of $9.50 an
hour as much more just. Msgr. Jerome Martnez of Santa Fe, who stoutly
supported the local living wage campaign, told The New York Times that
some business owners criticized him, urging him to stick to religion. Monsignor
Martnez responded: Well, pardon methis is religion. How can you worship a God
HOULD PEOPLE WHO WORK

WILLIAM P. QUIGLEY is the Janet Mary Riley Professor of Law at Loyola Universitys School

of Law in New Orleans and the author of Ending Poverty as We Know It: Guaranteeing a
Right to a Job at a Living Wage (Temple Univ. Press, 2003).

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that you do not see and oppress the workers that you do
see?
For over a century Catholic social teaching has pushed
for living wages, and many churches are part of a living
wage movement that is creating real justice victories for
low-wage workers. The living wage movement believes
that people who work full-time should not have to raise
their families in poverty, as millions now do. There are
two fronts in the living wage movementthe effort to
raise the national federal minimum wage and the effort to
create higher living wages on the state and local level.
The current federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour
went into effect on Sept. 1, 1997. According to the
Congressional Research Service, if the minimum wage
were adjusted to allow it to retain its 1968 value, it would
now have to be at least $8.68 per hour. Efforts have been
underway in Congress to raise the national minimum
wage to $7.25 an hour and link future increases to congressional pay raises. This would increase wages for nearly 15 million workers.
On the local level, 22 states and the District of
Columbia require higher minimum wages than the federal minimum. Washington State requires a minimum wage
of $7.63 an hour. Additionally, more than 190 cities have
already enacted laws that raise the local minimum. Santa
Fes, at $9.50 an hour, leads the way. These efforts to assist
workers to earn living wages are explicitly supported by
over 100 years of Catholic social teaching.

History of the Movement

The primary reason there is a living wage movement is
that the federal minimum wage has consistently failed to
provide workers with enough to support themselves and
their families. Thus advocacy on the federal, state and
local levels is critical. From its start, the movement has
been made up of local coalitions of community groups,
labor organizations and interfaith religious denominations.
The first local victory by the current living wage movement came during the mid-1990s in Baltimore and
emerged from actions taken by a coalition of churches and
labor organizations. Fifty Baltimore churches approached
the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees to join in creating an organization of churches,
labor union members and low-wage service workers.
Churches were seeing an increase in the use of soup
kitchens and pantries by the working poor. Low-wage
workers were often turning to food stamps, publicly
financed health care and private assistance from churches to
make up the difference from their low-wage work.
The churches concluded that minimum-wage jobs with
no benefits were not helping people escape poverty. The
August 28-September 4, 2006 America

labor unions were concerned about the privatization of

government jobs in areas like janitorial and food services,
which replaced good public jobs with low-wage private
jobs. Together they concluded that private companies were
paying low salaries in order to win low-bid government
contracts. To them, this was municipal subsidization of
poverty.
The Baltimore coalition created a local campaign.
Members worked together for a law that would require
businesses that had contracts with the city to pay their
workers at least a living wage. Churches and labor contributed people and funds to educate the public about the
problem of low wages and to lobby for the living wage bill.
Thanks to the work of the coalition, Baltimore ultimately enacted a local living wage law in July 1996. City
contractors had to pay a minimum of $6.10 an hour in
1996, when the federal minimum was $4.25, rising in annual increments to $7.70 an hour in 1999. The goal of the law
was to place the wage at a level sufficient to lift a family of
four over the poverty level. The measure was estimated to
apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 workers. The success of
this effort in Baltimore inspired the development of other
national, state and local living wage coalitions made up of
labor, community and religious organizations.
Nationwide, millions of workers need a raise. The
Economic Policy Institute estimates that 14.9 million
workers would receive a significant increase in their hourly
wage rate if the minimum were raised from $5.15 to $7.25
by 2008. Of these workers, 6.6 million currently earn less
than $7.25 and would be directly affected by an increase.
An additional 8.3 million workers who earn slightly more
than the minimum would also likely benefit from an
increase because of the spillover effect on other workers.
Eighty percent of workers whose wages would be raised by
such an increase are adults. The majority of the affected
workers would be women. African-American and Hispanic
workers would also benefit.
No one claims that minimum wages are sufficient to pay
for rent, child care, food, health care and utilities. Do these
people therefore simply go without? No. Our families and
communities pitch in and supplement the low wages of family members who do not earn enough. Our churches and
social service agencies provide child care, food pantries,
financial assistance and soup kitchens. Our local, state and
federal governments provide medical care, utility assistance
and help with the costs of food. Since the community at large
will pay the cost one way or another, would it not be better
for working people to be able to support themselves directly
rather than having to turn to family members, churches and
the government?
There is widespread popular support for living wages. A
survey in April 2000 found 94 percent agreed that as a
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country, we should make sure that people who work fulltime should be able to earn enough to keep their families
out of poverty. Twenty-two states and 190 cities did not
just spontaneously enact 50 living wage ordinances. These
represent a cumulation of intense organizing and years of
education and advocacy work.
Though many groups have worked for living wages, the
community organization ACORN has been the most persistent and consistent advocate nationwide. (Their organization maintains an excellent online source for further
study: the Living Wage Resource Center. The Web site of
Interfaith Worker Justice is also a good national resource
for faith-based organizing and solidarity with low-wage
workers.)

Support From Catholic Teaching

The Catholic Church was the first religious community to
stand up for living wages over a century ago, and Catholic
social teaching since then has continued its vigorous advocacy. Monsignor Martnez explained the churchs long tradition to a New York Times reporter, while discussing a
successful effort to raise the local minimum wage to $9.50
an hour: The churchs position on social justice is long
established. I think, unfortunately, its one of our best kept
secrets.

Catholic teaching on living wages started in 1891. Pope

Leo XIIIs papal letter Rerum Novarum recognized the right
of every worker to receive wages sufficient to provide for a
family. Pope Pius XI reaffirmed the principle of the need for
a living wage, writing in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), In the
first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.
The U.S. Catholic bishops gave the need for a living
wage priority in their Statement on Church and Social Order
(1940):
The first claim of labor, which takes priority over
any claim of the owners to profits, respects the right
to a living wage. By the term living wage we understand a wage sufficient not merely for the decent
support of the workingman himself but also of his
family. A wage so low that it must be supplemented
by the wage of wife and mother or by the children of
the family before it can provide adequate food,
clothing, and shelter together with essential spiritual and cultural needs cannot be regarded as a living
wage. Furthermore, a living wage means sufficient
income to meet not merely the present necessities of
life but those of unemployment, sickness, death, and
old age as well.
Opponents have always argued that wage levels should
be left to the market. In 1961, in the encyclical Mater et
Magistra, Pope John XXIII responded to that claim and
proclaimed that a living wage was clearly a justice issue:
We therefore consider it our duty to reaffirm that
the remuneration of work is not something that can
be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it
be a decision left to the will of the more powerful.
It must be determined in accordance with justice
and equity; which means that workers must be paid
a wage which allows them to live a truly human life
and to fulfill their family obligations in a worthy
manner.
Pope John Paul II went further. In On Human Work
(1981) he wrote that payment of living wages was a critical
criterion for determining the legitimacy of the entire economic system:
Hence in every case a just wage is the concrete
means of verifying the whole socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is functioning justly. It is not the only means of checking,
but it is a particularly important one and in a sense
the key means.

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In their 1986 letter, Economic Justice for All, the U.S.

Catholic bishops reaffirmed that payment of just wages is
the initial step in combating poverty and put the issue
squarely on the social justice agenda for the American
economy: The first line of attack against poverty must be
to build and sustain a healthy economy that provides
employment opportunities at just wages for all adults who
are able to work. According to the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, refusing to pay just wages, even if allowed
by law, is a violation of the Seventh Commandment.
Monsignor Martnez and various church groups are
squarely within the tradition in advocating for living
wages for workers on the local, state and federal level.
Recent victories on the state and local level by coalitions of religious, labor and community groups have provided a surge of energy and enthusiasm for those who support living wages and self-sufficiency for all workers. The
challenge is to take that to the national level and increase
the numbers of workers who are entitled by law to earn a
living wage. By the actions of the living wage movement
and the life breathed into the Catholic social tradition by
church groups and people like Monsignor Martnezour
nation is moving toward the goal defined by Franklin D.
Roosevelt in 1937: that all our working men and women
should receive a fair days pay for a fair days work.

August 28-September 4, 2006 America

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