Lives Get a Little Better on a Living Wage

Let the academics, politicians and labor leaders debate the definition of a living wage. For airport janitor Jose Morales, it means two concrete things--a bed and a car.

Two years ago, Morales was sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes in a Compton garage. Every morning before dawn, he stumbled to the corner bus stop for the start of a two-hour commute to his job at Los Angeles International Airport.

Twice on that corner he was mugged. Without health insurance, he considered himself particularly lucky to escape unhurt.

Now Morales stretches out at night on a soft double bed. With his commute time cut in half by driving, he can sleep until 5. He no longer feels vulnerable to predawn assaults. And if he was to be hurt, his medical expenses would be covered by insurance.

What has made the difference is a 1997 “living wage” ordinance that boosted pay for the LAX janitor, and some 2,000 other bottom-rung workers in Los Angeles, by nearly $2 an hour.

Now in exchange for eight hours of sweeping, dusting and dumping trash, the 36-year-old immigrant earns $59 a day, plus health benefits. Still far from princely, it’s a 36% raise over his old pay, and enough to qualify for what Morales calls a salario digno.

“Everyone thinks that working here at the airport, we must earn a lot of money,” said Morales, chatting in a closet-sized room where he and 45 other Terminal 2 janitors pick up mops and change into navy blue uniforms. “It’s not true. But at least now with the living wage, we can hold our heads up high.”

The ordinance is part of a wave of living wage legislation pushed by labor unions and community groups and adopted by more than 20 local governments, including Pasadena, during the past four years. Dozens more are considering similar laws.

From Boston to Portland, the movement has drawn attention to the growing gap between rich and poor, a division that has accelerated sharply in the last decade as wages have stagnated for the nation’s janitors, food servers, parking lot attendants and other low-skilled workers.

It has also prompted dueling studies on the economic impacts of boosting pay for those low-wage workers.

Business groups depict the laws as job-killers that hurt entry level workers the most by denying them a toehold in the market. Organizations such as the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce have argued that they add to an unfriendly business climate that drives away development. In general, said Carol Schatz of the Center City Assn., “it’s more difficult to do business here, more expensive to do business here, and there’s more social engineering here.”

Backers say the laws help revitalize poor communities because the extra dollars ripple through local economies. And because low-wage workers in Los Angeles are predominantly Latino immigrants and African Americans, proponents cast the law as a matter of social justice.

For all the hoopla and hand-wringing, however, the mandated living wages, which range from $6.25 an hour in Milwaukee to $9.50 in San Jose, have affected relatively few workers. Most apply only to companies with city contracts or subsidies. And they take effect slowly, as contracts are renewed. Although nearly 2 years old, the Los Angeles ordinance is just beginning to benefit large numbers of workers. It is expected to raise pay for only 5,000 to 10,000, concentrated at the city’s airports, sports venues and government offices.

“The actual numbers are small, and the fact that they are small is part of the reason [living wage ordinances] are winning,” said Robert Pollin, a political economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “But for those few people, it’s a lot of money. It’s going to improve their living standards.”

For the estimated 2,000 workers who have received raises in Los Angeles so far, the living wage can be measured in immediate and tangible terms. Co-workers of Morales include a single mother who quit her second job to spend more time with her children; a newlywed who moved with his wife from shared housing to an apartment of their own; a man in his 50s who started paying off a hospital debt that stemmed from a bus stop beating.

For Morales, the step up from $5.45 to $7.25 an hour (increased to $7.39 a year later) moved him from a chronic state of crisis to a more manageable level of poverty. He still counts pennies. He still scans the garbage he dumps for discarded treasures. He still considers a rare fast-food meal to be a dining-out experience.

He has learned over the last year and a half that there is nothing magic about the city-mandated living wage. It is just an arbitrary number, with no more meaning in the real world than the slightly higher federal poverty line, or the much lower minimum wage.

But with $1,000 a month in take-home pay, the janitor is able to afford some minimal comforts.

Two purchases changed his life: a bed and a ’93 Mazda sedan. Both items, along with matching love seats for the living room and a small dining room table, were purchased on credit--a luxury he could not previously afford. Now Morales finds himself in a juggling mode familiar to many consumers.

“Sometimes I have to be late with a payment,” he said, spreading a file of bills on the new table. “The next month, I always pay that one on time.”

Like many low-wage workers in Los Angeles, Morales, who emigrated from Guadalajara 18 years ago, has survived by pooling resources with friends and family members. For several years, he shared a converted garage with his sister, her husband and the couple’s two young sons. Too poor to buy furniture, they scavenged cardboard boxes from a nearby supermarket and spread them on the floor to make a communal bed.

But Morales’ raise allowed the extended family to move to more spacious quarters--a two-bedroom house that rents for $615 a month--and to slowly begin furnishing it.

Still far from palatial, the house measures about 800 square feet and is covered with peeling beige paint and security bars. Inside, the rooms are dark and stuffy, and sister Angelica Hernandez rarely ventures outside at night. She earns $80 a week baby-sitting two children, in addition to caring for her own two young sons and running an informal market out of her kitchen. Her husband takes occasional construction jobs and earns cash fixing cars for neighbors and friends. As the only family member with a full-time job, Morales is the major breadwinner.

And so he pays the largest share of the rent--$315, including utilities. In turn, his sister prepares most of his meals. His other regular monthly expenses include: $200 for credit cards--$50 each to J.C. Penney, MasterCard, Target and a furniture store; $280 for car and insurance payments; and $12 for a pager, which he deems necessary for his union activism.

That leaves less than $200 a month for gas, incidentals and rare nights out at a disco with friends--a tight squeeze by any measure.

“The truth is, it’s not a very livable wage,” said Morales.

“But it’s a big change for the better,” he said. “We have health insurance, and for families that means a lot. I think for this moment, it is a fair wage. And maybe later,” he added, “we can get it a little higher.”

Morales dreams of a day when his pay approaches that of the few airport janitors who remain directly employed by the city. Those Civil Service jobs, which rarely come open and are highly competitive, start at more than $8 an hour, and can climb to $15 an hour with full benefits.

The enormous pay gap grew out of the city’s outsourcing of most janitorial services to private contractors at the airport, the Central Library, the zoo and other municipal facilities. Outsourcing has saved the city millions, primarily because private contractors were able to dramatically cut labor costs by paying workers the state minimum wage, now $5.75 an hour.

But living wage advocates argued that labor had paid too high a price, and that the city had an obligation to push wages for those outsourced jobs to a livable level.

The amount arrived at in 1997--$7.25 an hour--was just below the federal poverty line for a family of four. It was bumped up to $7.39 by a cost-of-living increase last year.

Eventually all airport workers should earn the living wage under a strengthened amendment passed by the council in November.

Last month, about 700 airport concession workers employed by Host Marriott, including bartenders, food servers and cashiers, signed a new contract that brought their wages up to $7.39 an hour or higher, plus benefits.

Living wage proponents are now focusing their efforts on security baggage screeners, who are attempting to affiliate with the Service Employees International Union.

The long-term effect of the wage hikes won’t be known for some time, but UCLA law professor Rick Sander, who has monitored the living wage law for the city, said the impact so far has been small.

“We estimate the city is bearing about half the cost of living wage increases,” Sander said. Companies eager to do business with the government are absorbing the other half, he said. There has been little shrinkage of the work force to compensate for higher wages, Sander added.

Living wage advocates clearly hope their local successes will bolster arguments for a higher minimum wage at the state and federal levels, where proposed legislation has failed in recent years.

If nothing else, the issue has stirred debate about what it takes to make a decent living these days.

Higher-wage advocates say true living costs are even greater than the hourly wages of $7 to $9 set by most of the 25 cities and counties with living wage laws.

In a recent study for Los Angeles County, Sander estimated basic living expenses for a family of three at $20,000, or about $10 an hour.

“If you look at surveys of peoples’ expenditures, that’s pretty close,” Sander said. “People who make $8,000 a year spend a lot more than that. How do they do it? With credit cards, personal loans, extra informal income. However they can. Until people make close to $20,000, their spending usually exceeds their income.”

For hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles workers, it may come as little surprise that the city’s “living wage” doesn’t cover the basics. But those who benefit are grateful for what they can get.

“If it wasn’t for the law, I would be making $5.90 an hour now,” said Morales. “At least I’m up to the poverty line. That’s a big step for me.”