The Living Wage

 

 

The Living Wage                               

Does a fast food worker deserve $15 per hour?  The logic behind that question is the assignment of value to the work of a fast food worker:  the idea that a person making hamburgers and fries does not deserve a high wage because the act of making hamburgers and fries does not deserve such a value. 

If we apply that same logic to, say, dribbling a basketball, we ought to conclude that such an activity does not warrant a multi-million dollar contract, to say nothing of endorsement contracts for various products.  One could also argue that the cost of tickets to basketball games and the cost of concessions would certainly be lower if athletes received far less in compensation for activities whose sole value lay in entertainment.  At least the fast food worker produces food that people eat.

But all of this talk of the value of work and the misses the point.  In the two cases above salaries are determined by an arbitrary and subjective notion of the relative value of each profession.  In such a world we cannot ever arrive at what might be a fair wage because we are entirely in the realm of subjective feelings about each type of work.  The basketball player has no objective value to argue successfully that his work is of such a great value that it deserves millions of dollars per year in salary more than the person who makes fast food meals.  Dribbling a basketball is not intrinsically more valuable work than cooking food.

We must also recognize that increasing the minimum wage, while necessary, will not of itself lift those who depend upon it out of poverty.  In my life time the minimum wage has risen from $3.35 to its present value of $7.75.  With each increase in the minimum wage there is the hope and expectation that those on the bottom will be lifted out of poverty to a better life.  It has not happened, and in fact the wage gap and poverty rates have worsened.  But that is not the fault of the minimum wage.  In fact such inequities would be worse without a minimum wage, as history demonstrated to us in the days of the sweatshops.  The rate of pay for those at the top has far exceeded increases in the minimum wage, and these increases are the cause of what ails us at the bottom, for we have arbitrarily assigned greater value to the work of those at the top to the work of those at the bottom.

The only solution to the issue of wages is to assign value not to the work but rather to the person doing the work.  The fast food worker deserves a living wage.  The basketball player deserves a living wage.  The people performing the work are what is of value more than the work itself.  It is the intrinsic dignity and value of the human person that is at the heart of the Church’s teaching on a living wage.  The moment we begin to shift the conversation and the assignment of value from the work to the person we will begin to arrive at very different answers about wages.  And it is only then that we will arrive at just notions of a living wage for all.

All that was said above is summarized in the following two paragraphs from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:

302. Remuneration is the most important means for achieving justice in work relationships.[659] The “just wage is the legitimate fruit of work”.[660]

They commit grave injustice who refuse to pay a just wage or who do not give it in due time and in proportion to the work done (cf. Lv 19:13; Dt 24:14-15; Jas 5:4). A salary is the instrument that permits the labourer to gain access to the goods of the earth. “Remuneration for labour is to be such that man may be furnished the means to cultivate worthily his own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of his dependents, in view of the function and productiveness of each one, the conditions of the factory or workshop, and the common good”. The simple agreement between employee and employer with regard to the amount of pay to be received is not sufficient for the agreed-upon salary to qualify as a “just wage”, because a just wage “must not be below the level of subsistence” of the worker: natural justice precedes and is above the freedom of the contract.



303. The economic well-being of a country is not measured exclusively by the quantity of goods it produces but also by taking into account the manner in which they are produced and the level of equity in the distribution of income, which should allow everyone access to what is necessary for their personal development and perfection. An equitable distribution of income is to be sought on the basis of criteria not merely of commutative justice but also of social justice that is, considering, beyond the objective value of the work rendered, the human dignity of the subjects who perform it. Authentic economic well-being is pursued also by means of suitable social policies for the redistribution of income which, taking general conditions into account, look at merit as well as at the need of each citizen.