By JUSTIN SCHNEIDER, Herald Bulletin
Lois Rockhill sees it every day. As executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana, Rockhill helps provide sustenance to hard-working people struggling to make ends meet.
"The figure we've used for a long time is that we have 49,000 people living at or below poverty," Rockhill said. "We have another number we're adding to that: We have over 72,000 people living between 100 percent and 180 percent of poverty. These are people who are making some money, but not making a living wage."
They prepare our meals, stock our shelves and clean our hotel rooms, but the minimum-wage workers so vital to Indiana's economy barely earn enough to survive. Minimum wage in Indiana has been set at $5.15 an hour, roughly $10,712 a year and has not changed in nearly a decade.
During the next session of the Indiana General Assembly, House Democrats will push a proposal to gradually increase Indiana's minimum wage to $7.50 an hour. Rep. John Day, D-Indianapolis, has introduced minimum-wage legislation several years running and the latest bill would increase the hourly rate to $6 by next September, to $6.75 by March 2008, and to $7.50 by September 2008.
Employers, too, have the right to pay workers more than the minimum wage. Rockhill said Second Harvest has chosen to make itself part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"Of course, employers aren't locked into a minimum wage," Rockhill said. "At the food bank, we don't start people at minimum wage. That's too low to make ends meet."
She said an increase to $7.25 or $7.50 is the least legislators can do for Hoosier laborers. Given the rate of inflation, $7.25 in 2009 will be worth only $6.75 in today's dollars.
Previous wage bills died in the Republican-controlled Senate. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce has lobbied against such legislation, insisting the state minimum wage should be no higher than the federal level.
Government-mandated wage increases hurt low-income people by forcing employers to downsize, Chamber President Kevin Brinegar said.
"It's simple economics: You raise the price of labor, you get less of it in terms of jobs offered by business," Brinegar said. "The time and effort would be better served focusing on work-force development training, literacy training, building skills of the work force where (workers) can qualify for jobs that pay much more than minimum wage."
The loss of automotive industry jobs in Madison County has driven many workers to low-paying positions. Shelly Walker, 54 of Anderson, spent nearly 20 years of her life working minimum-wage jobs.
"Two people on minimum wage is still poverty level," said Walker, who worked in several hotels from the age of 14 to 33. "I think someone should be smart enough to fix it. Luckily, I've learned that money doesn't make a person happy."
In July, Walker said, her car broke down and she began taking the bus from her 60th Street home on the south side of Anderson. She sympathizes with the workers who travel by bus from Anderson's residential neighborhoods to businesses clustered on Scatterfield Road.
"It upsets me to see those people," she said. "It's a sad state of affairs that there's no jobs in America. Anderson built everything by the interstate. They don't even have stores downtown."
Today, Walker receives Supplemental Security Income and assistance from Housing and Urban Development to pay her bills.
"At least people today have benefits," Walker said. "But some employers won't let them get 40 hours, so they get around it."
State Sen. Tim Lanane, D-District 25, has drafted a bill to increase minimum wage to $7.25 over a two-year time period. With the Democrats gaining control of the Indiana General Assembly in November, he said the time is right for a change of policy.
"I think the entire General Assembly is more predisposed to increase the minimum wage," Lanane said. "It has been almost 10 years since the minimum wage was raised on a national level. We're not going to wait for Congress to raise this."
Lanane said the $5.15 per hour in 1996 is worth just $3.95 today. An estimated 38,000 workers receive minimum wage in Indiana, but an increase to $7.25 or $7.50 would help the estimated 140,000 workers who earn between $5.15 and $7.25.
He discounts claims by opponents of a mandated minimum wage that it harms the economy.
"Studies have been done to look at states that had increased minimum wage and those states have not seen any adverse affects as far as job growth," Lanane said. "In fact, there is a strong argument that putting a little more money in workers' pockets helps them. They participate in a little bit more meaningful manner in the economy."
Todd Eberz of Anderson said an extra dollar or two per hour would help him dramatically. He expected to go to work in the auto industry like his father, but as jobs at the big three dried up, he had to find a contingency plan.
Now Eberz, 33, corrals shopping carts at an Anderson supermarket where he earns slightly more than minimum wage.
"I made some stupid mistakes, living above my means when I was younger," he said. "I never finished school, but I just got done paying off college loans. I got in trouble with some credit card debt and I'm working my way out."
Eberz said giving minimum-wage workers a raise will mean more money circulating back into the economy.
"I barely have enough to cover my expenses," he said. "I'm definitely not socking any money away. Everything I earn is going to somebody else, eventually.
Eberz is scraping by on his own, but even for families, it's difficult to survive on minimum wage.
Danielle Swifton of Anderson works for a national fast-food restaurant. Her husband works seasonal construction jobs and collects disability the rest of the year. Between them, she said, the struggle to provide the basics for their two children.
"We live check-to-check," said Swifton, 24, during a cigarette break. "It's tough trying to pay rent, get groceries, car payment, insurance. If we didn't have family to help watch the children, I don't know what we would do."
A self-described liberal, Norma Abbey of Anderson is a longtime advocate for an increased minimum wage.
"Several organizations have said that raising the minimum wage would be the most important thing we can do to get rid of hunger in our country," Abbey said. "One of the opposition arguments is that raising the minimum wage reduces jobs, but studies show that not to be true. In fact, some states have raised the minimum wage and gained jobs instead of losing them."
Abbey has met with community leaders to advocate a minimum wage increase. She said anyone who works 40 hours a week should be able to survive, as a matter of social justice.
"These people do hard work, they work in motels, they take care of children," Abbey said. " We're not even talking about a living wage."
Incoming U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said raising the minimum wage is a top priority for the House to accomplish in its first 100 hours of legislative business. The federal legislation is likely to call for phased-in increase to $7.25 per hour.
State Rep. Scott Reske, D-District 37, said a similar sentiment exists among Indiana lawmakers.
"I think, universally, there's a recognition even by small businesses that something needs to be done," Reske said. "The funny thing is their competitors have to increase minimum wage, so they all have to do it together."
He said he is also working on universal health-care legislation for the upcoming session. Issues of health care and minimum wage go hand-in-hand when it comes to addressing quality of life issues for working people in Indiana.
"Even more important than the minimum wage is for employees and employers to address universal, comprehensive health care," Reske said. "I'm not talking about socialized medicine. I'm working with a team of two other legislators to create a capitalism-based universal health care that will increase the efficiency of the health care system."
Every argument in favor of increasing minimum wage, however, inspires a tirade against it.
Patrick Barkey, a professor in the economics department at Ball State University, and a frequent contributor to The Herald Bulletin, said minimum wage laws violate the theory of supply and demand.
"In continuously debating, and sometime even passing, legislation on wage rates paid by businesses, we give credence to the notion that our elected politicians can legislate economic outcomes," Barkey wrote in October. "And the experience of other countries, not to mention our own experience at different times in our history, has amply demonstrated the foolishness - if not outright danger - of pursuing that idea."
In the runup to the Nov. 7 election, Kenneth J. Zeller, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO railed against the resistance to minimum wage legislation.
"The average CEO's pay in America is 821 times greater than the pay of a minimum wage worker," he said. "At $5.15 an hour, it takes a minimum wage worker a full 52-week year to earn what the average CEO earned before lunch on the first day of the year. The Republican-dominated Congress has given itself nine pay raises since 1997 totaling $35,000 while shamelessly blocking attempts to raise the federal minimum for low-wage workers."
It should also be pointed out that Congress has raised its own compensation eight times since it last raised minimum wage in 1997. The increases amount to 24 percent to the current level of $165,000 a year.
Zeller said the loss of unions in communities such as Anderson have made times especially tough for workers.
"The unions of this country have fought hard to create the middle-class and we are not going to give that up," Zeller said. "We will educate, agitate, organize and mobilize our members to take back our country from the corporate money players and special interests that currently wield power."