Making Capital Work for Working Families

Like many cities across the nation, Cincinnati, Columbus and Indianapolis face a serious dilemma—an explosion of low-wage service sector jobs that do little to provide opportunity, and instead are fueling an increase in the number of working poor families unable to afford health care, a decent place to live and to feed their families.

 

_o3w5937.jpgA February 2007 McClatchy analysis of census data “found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005.” The report also notes that the “share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.” (Source)

Globalization, and a thirst for profits that trumps responsibility, has created corporate behemoths that no longer even question the business models that trim costs and boost profits by lowering wages and benefits for the workers on whom they depend, regardless of the costs to our families and communities. The results are staggering. Poverty is up, and jobs with opportunity are down.

A road map to prosperity for our cities and our region exists.

By joining together, using our regional and global strength, low-wage workers are seeking to create a new standard—including fair wages, access to affordable health care and full-time jobs—for nearly 165,000 service workers in all three cities. This will begin when janitors—who now are paid as little as $26 a day, with few paid more than $64 a day—negotiate with cleaning contractors who provide janitorial services to the region’s commercial offices, malls, banks, universities, airports, pharmaceutical labs, airports, museums, and municipal, county and state offices.

Did You Know ... ? 

 

  • The federal poverty line for a family of four, with two children under 18, is $19,806. Janitors are paid as low as $6864 per year and few are paid more than $16,896 per year. Few have health insurance. (“Census: Area closer to poverty,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Wednesday, August 30, 2006)
  • Thirty-nine Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Cincinnati, Columbus and Indianapolis. 18 of these are Fortune 500 companies—who bring in combined revenues of $365 billion a year, or an average of $1 billion dollars A DAY.dsc_0028.jpg
  • Ohio is the only state with two of the country's 10 most-impoverished cities. Cincinnati ranked as the nation's eighth-poorest big city, as 25 percent of residents fell below the poverty line. Cleveland ranked first. (“Census: Area closer to poverty,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Wednesday, August 30, 2006)
  • In Ohio, twenty-four percent of workers in the state earn poverty level wages. And a whopping thirty-four percent of families live in poverty. Almost half of Ohio families face insecurity over housing. (http://www.nccp.org/state_detail_context_OH.html)