[Imc-newsroom] Living Wage in Urbana

[Mike Lehman]

On Monday, March 25, a Living Wage resolution will be introduced for
discussion at the Urbana City Council's committee of the whole meeting.
The meeting starts at 7:30pm at the Urbana City Building with public
participation. We have volunteers to speak about the Living Wage then,
but we would like to have a large turnout of supporters. We invite your
attendance Monday in support of a Living Wage in Urbana.

After passing out of the committee of the whole, the final vote could be
as soon as the April 1 Urbana City Council meeting, although it could be
later. We will keep you posted on developments.

If Urbana adopts a Living Wage policy, it will be the fourth unit of
government in Champaign County to do so. In general, Urbana already
meets the requirement to pay all its full-time workers at least a Living
Wage, but its approval of this policy will see Urbana making a specific
commitment to continue doing so and to refrain from the temptation to
contract-out work at less than Living Wage in the future.

An important new study just released indicates that Living Wage policies
do have a positive effect for workers covered by such policies.
http://www.ppic.org/publications/PPIC156/ppic156.abstract.html

The Public Policy Institute of California studied the effects of the
Living Wage in some 40 localities where it has been adopted. Although
there was some limited job loss, the overall effect of Living Wage
policies shows that they do raise the incomes of the working poor. This
is consistent with the arguments made locally that the jobs done by
these workers are so essential that job loss among these workers is
usually not an option if vital public services are to continue. Another
factor is that the wider the application of the Living Wage policy, the
more the benefit to the community in raising overall incomes among
low-wage workers. As the Living Wage is successfully adopted by more
units of government locally, we will be looking for opportunities to
expand the application of it to bring maximum benefit to our community.


It seems that today's News-Gazette will be carrying an article about the
LW coming up in Urbana this coming Monday, March 25 during the Urbana
City Council's committee of the whole meeting at 7:30pm.

The story is up on the N-G website:
<http://www.news-gazette.com/story.cfm?Number=11258>

Here's a link to a story I published on the U-C IMC website:
<http://www.ucimc.org/front.php3?article_id=4717&group=webcast>

Keep spreading the word about Monday. I'm looking forward to seeing you
the meeting.
Mike Lehman