Study Calls for Better Treatment of Workers

Companies should treat their low-wage workers better -- for the companies’ own good.

That was the conclusion of a corporate-funded study released Thursday that described the precarious existence of many hourly-wage earners.

The study highlighted 15 programs -- ranging from subsidized child care at Bank of America to emergency loans available at Levi Strauss & Co. -- that improved workers’ lot while bettering their employers’ bottom lines.

Along with two other reports on low-wage workers also released Thursday, the study illustrates the increasing attention being paid to these employees, who account for a growing percentage of the American workforce.

“Anything that increases employee satisfaction and morale, and basically makes it easier for [low-wage workers] to show up for work every day, can have a tremendous impact on employee engagement, customer service and productivity,” said Donna Klein, chief executive of Corporate Voices for Working Families, which sponsored the study conducted by the Boston College Center for Work and Family. Corporate Voices, founded by Marriott Hotels in 2001, has 47 members.

About one-third of all U.S. workers earn less than $15,000 a year and an additional 20% make between that and $25,000, the study said.

Many of those workers lack healthcare, paid sick days and other benefits that higher-wage workers take for granted. In that world, a relatively minor setback, such as a flat tire or sick child, can set off a financial crisis from which a family might not recover for months.

The two other reports released Thursday, one by the Urban Institute and the other by two leading researchers of low-wage labor, underscored low-wage workers’ difficulties in an age of changing technology, globalization and pressure from Wall Street for short-term earnings.

For example, by analyzing data from a 2002 survey of 40,000 households, the Urban Institute documented that 41% of all parents earning as much as twice the federal poverty level didn’t receive paid sick leave, vacation days or other forms of compensated leave.

Of those with higher earnings, 84% had some form of paid leave, the Urban Institute found.

Job tenure didn’t improve the situation for workers in the lower bracket, the report said. Even after two years on the job, the numbers were unchanged, said author Katherin Ross Phillips, who advocated federal legislation similar to California’s paid family leave act, set to take effect July 1.

“The families who need this are already stretched financially and psychologically,” Ross Phillips said.

The third report, by Eileen Appelbaum of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University and Annette Bernhardt of the Brennan Center for Justice, noted a 30-year “hollowing out” of the middle class and the concurrent growth of dead-end low-wage jobs.

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Two of the studies can be found at www.cvworkingfamilies.org and www.urban.org.