Labor advocates point out taxpayer link

Pointing to a robust economy and efforts to move people from welfare to work, they say the time has come to tackle the wage issue.

"We say to people, `Go get a job,' and then we don't provide jobs that pay enough to support their families," says Barbara Kellogg, a local organizer for the Oregon Public Employees Union. "That's wrong."

State and local labor leaders met Thursday in Medford to discuss the Northwest Job Gap Study completed by the University of Washington's Northwest Policy Center and released this week.

The four-state study defined a living wage for a single adult as $10.07 an hour and found that 47 percent of Oregon's 1996 job openings failed to pay that amount. Jackson County was identified in the study as a high-cost place to live in Oregon, bumping the wage needed for a single adult to get by without public assistance to $10.36 an hour.

"A lot of people come to this and say, `Yes, but there's nothing you can do about it' and there are some that say there's nothing you should do about it," says Rich Rohde of the Rogue Valley's chapter of Oregon Action, a citizens group and one of the study's sponsors. "What we need to do is to say, `No, we are going to do something about it."'

Using the study as a benchmark for what an acceptable wage is, Rohde and other advocates plan to push for better-paying jobs in three specific ways:

Encouraging county commissioners to require companies contracting with the county to pay better wages.

"We want them to pass a resolution that says if we are going to spend public money it will go for living-wage jobs," Rohde says.

In October, Multnomah County adopted a similar policy. It requires all new contracts for custodial and security services pay non-supervisory employees at least $9 an hour. It also provides for that amount to rise with the Portland-area cost of living.

Rohde says the first step here will be to present the full study to county commissioners; so far, only Commissioner Sue Kupillas has been given a copy.

Raising public awareness of the issue through "report cards" on employers' wage practices.

Rohde says the idea is to recognize companies that are providing acceptable wages in hopes of encouraging others to do the same.

"This is not to tear down businesses but to work with them," he says. Rohde admits convincing employers to pay higher wages won't be easy but insists it makes sense. He and several others suggest that there are hidden costs to paying less than a living wage, from needing more tax money to support the growing number of people on the Oregon Health Plan to the costs of retraining workers who leave for higher-paying jobs.

By focusing economic development efforts on companies that offer higher-paying jobs.