A recent report revealed locally-set living wages could improve the quality of life for workers in Madison.
The recently released report by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin said living wages, or wages set by local communities at slightly higher levels than the minimum wage, could help local workers and maybe help to eventually raise the minimum wage.
Madison already has a living wage ordinance, set by City Council in the 1990s, and Dane County’s ordinance followed shortly after, according to Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4.
David Schmiedicke, Madison’s financial director, said the ordinance should be helping Madison workers already.
“The intent of the council was to ensure that individuals working at certain professions earned a wage at a level that allowed them to have access to housing and other basic needs,” Schmiedicke said.
Verveer said many areas in the United States have living wages and some even have legislation that requires private businesses to have a minimum wage to protect workers.
However, Verveer said the state of Wisconsin does not allow changes to the minimum wage, so Madison and Dane County have taken different measures to assist city employees.
“In the case of Madison, every city of Madison employee will be paid a specific living wage that is tied to the rate of inflation [….] The laws that we have at the local area [in] our area [are] really for our own employees and our contracted employees,” Verveer said.
A contributor to the COWS report, Jody Knauss, said while many cities and counties in the country, including Wisconsin, lack the legal authority to raise minimum wages, local communities can control which businesses they work with. This way, communities can ensure the companies they work with have higher wages for workers, she said.
“The objective of living wage ordinance is, to say, for companies that benefit from doing business with the taxpayers, that they should pay their workers better, pay their workers a living wage which is basically set higher than the local statewide minimum wage,” Knauss said.
For Madison and Dane County, these companies include nonprofit organizations providing human services for residents of the community, Verveer said. He said city employees, employees working hourly, employees working under contracts and employees receiving financial assistance from the city, such as building developers, all benefit from the company selectivity.
“By receiving money from the city of Madison, [the companies] sign a contract where they promise to pay their employees a living wage, so we’re able to set our own, in essence, minimum wage,” Verveer said. “We call it a living wage because it certainly is higher than the minimum wage.”
According to the report, some people object to employing living wages because they have the potential to raise area taxes and increase the price of living.
Verveer said living wages in no way hurt the economy, and added they align with the recent call for a higher minimum wage by President Barack Obama.
“If the COWS report is geared toward encouraging the government and state legislature to do the right thing and increase state minimum wage […] I certainly agree with [it],” Verveer said.
