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JANUARY 2004
Washington state needs good quality jobs
by Rick S. Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO

What makes a good job? These days it seems the quality of jobs is declining.  With family-wage manufacturing jobs becoming an endangered species, the growing specter of low-wage, no-future jobs worries me. Do we really want a “Wal-Mart World” for our kids’ future?

The country’s largest retailer pays an average annual salary of $13,861 for its sales associate position. Employee turnover at Wal-Mart averages 44 percent a year. What kind of future does that promise for our children?

The growing concern about job quality is leading many to support job quality standards for recipients of economic development subsidies. Already 37 states, four counties and 25 American cities have adopted job standards, according to a study by Good Jobs First, a project of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C.

We agree that we need high standards to achieve progress in our schools. Why shouldn’t we think about adopting high standards in the workplace, too?

Let’s consider the idea of a standard for health care coverage. In our country, most people get their health care insurance through their employer. But some employers don’t provide affordable health insurance. It’s no wonder that the nation’s largest single employer, Wal-Mart, has advised its employees in this state on how to get into our taxpayer-subsidized Basic Health Plan to get health care coverage. It makes no sense for taxpayers to subsidize Wal-Mart’s failure to offer affordable health insurance to its low-wage workers.

Why not a standard for retirement benefits?  With wages stagnant or even falling, many workers don’t have any “extra” after the paycheck arrives to save for their own retirement needs.  We know that Social Security shouldn’t be the only source for retirement income.  But unless we have some kind of fair standard for retirement benefits, workers will have to keep working well into the 70s and 80s just to survive.  Whatever happened to the notion that if you gave 30 or 40 years of hard work, you would earn a decent retirement?

Why not a standard for a living wage?  Several cities and some counties around the country have established a “living wage ordinance” that requires companies with city or county contracts to meet a standard for a living wage in the area. We are fortunate in our state to have a minimum wage that is tied to the state’s cost-of-living because voters in every county of the state passed Initiative 688 a few years ago by a two-to-one margin. Initiative 688 endorsed the fundamental principle that workers who work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, should not be doomed to a life of unending poverty.  While the federal minimum wage remains stuck at a miserly $5.15 an hour, we have at least achieved a decent minimum wage of $7.16.  This simple measure is one reason why our state’s poverty rate is lower than the national average.  We should be proud of that modest accomplishment.

Rick Bender is President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
the largest labor organization in the state.

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Copyright © 2004  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO