While collecting signatures in the streets of Pittsburgh in July to place our campaign on the ballot, many supporters were struck by the number of workers whose main concern was the low wages they receive and finding a job with decent pay and benefits. Low pay often goes along with no health care, little or no benefits, poor working conditions, and forced overtime without receiving overtime pay. These workers included cooks, laborers, janitors, and all kinds of service workers. Many had part-time jobs. And quite a few were unemployed.

For the past month, the big-business press has been filled with articles, letters to the editor, and editorials ranting against the proposed "living wage" ordinance for Allegheny County. The titles of these items written by members of Chambers of Commerce, business owners, and newspaper editors tell it all: "No to living wage move," "Another good reason to leave town," "Workplace injury," and "It's socialism."

Their vehement opposition is echoed by similar articles in the national big-business press. Take, for example, an article in the August 21 USA Today, "'Living wage' to some, 'business killer' to others." The article opens saying that in the seaside city of Santa Monica, California, "84,000 owners of restaurants and luxury hotels are drawing the line in the sand. The thriving tourist industry is fighting a new ordinance that forces employers to nearly double the wages of the workers who make the beds and wash the dishes."

The "living wage" legislation in Allegheny County covers employers "who lease or sublease property from the county" and requires that they pay $9.12 an hour and $10.62 to those employers who don't provide health insurance. The idea is that workers will buy their own insurance out of their wages.

The call for a "living wage" is backed by the Western Pennsylvania Living Wage Campaign and dozens of local unions and Black rights organizations. Nationally it is supported by the AFL-CIO. Numerous such measures have been passed across the country and it is one of the main issues in several mayoral campaigns this year. Quite a few "living wage" measures have been rejected too.

The "living wage" campaign grows out of the fact that real wages on average are well below what they were in the opening of the 1970s. Even with the increase in 1996, the buying power of the minimum wage today is lower that it was in 1960--a full $2.25 below its high point in 1968. The current federal minimum wage is a paltry $5.15 an hour.

This past July Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stated before the Financial Services Committee that he is for abolishing the minimum wage. This month the Senate is supposed to move to vote to raise the minimum wage. The Bush administration says it is willing to accept a minimum wage increase provided "governors and state legislators would have the option of waiving part of the increase." In other words, Bush supports a wage increase, but one with no teeth. We shouldn't forget that this effort to get rid of the minimum wage comes at the same time that millions of working people are being cut from state welfare rolls. This is the biggest single success of the rulers so far in beginning to erode the federal Social Security system--one that the former Clinton administration takes credit for and boasts about.

The big-business mouthpieces have been hammering away at the "living wage" measures. Higher wages will cause jobs cuts and lead to slashing social services, raise prices, and hurt the most downtrodden, they claim. To aid their efforts, the employers have an army of so-called "labor experts" and "professional economists," not to mention those who call themselves "minimum wage advocates" to back up their claims.

One of these "experts" who supports abolishing the minimum wage recently wrote, "In 2001, we've come to recognize that Depression era and Great Society programs need a second look to reflect a different world."

All of their arguments are false, however. They are part of the ideological offensive to convince workers and working farmers of the reactionary, nonscientific view that wage hikes are the cause of everything from inflation to unemployment to outright impoverishment. Workers are told that higher wages mean lower income for everybody else. But this is a myth promoted by the capitalists, one that goes back to the origins of capitalism. The main purpose of the myth is to protect their profits and profit rates.

This ideological offensive is also designed to remind us to accept our lowly station in life and "just say yes" to our "betters."

Higher wages won by workers mean less profits for capitalists. Period. They don't come out of a "wage pool" that is depleted to the detriment of other workers and the lower middle class.

The truth is that wages have nothing to do with the value of the commodity a worker produces or the service he or she performs. To a substantial degree, wages are determined by what the working class, through organization and struggle, has been able to establish and defend over time as the socially acceptable minimum standard of living.

Karl Marx, founder of the modern revolutionary working-class movement, explained in his famous pamphlets Wage-Labor and Capital and Value, Price, and Profit, that the capitalist constantly reduces wages to their physical limit, while at the same time extending the working day to its maximum limit. Marx said that under capitalist relations "the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labor power more or less to its minimum limit." If the labor movement did not fight this "encroachment" by the capitalist they "would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation," said Marx.

The key thing my campaign points to is that the labor movement needs to organize a fight to increase wages, including the federal minimum wage. Doing so will create a better relationship of class forces for all workers to win better pay and safer working conditions.

Supporters of the "living wage" campaign in Pennsylvania are asking people to sign a postcard that reads, "I want my taxes invested to support working families at a living wage of at least $9.12 per hour with health insurance." My campaign is not for investing taxes this way. We are for lifting taxes off the shoulders of working people. The socialist campaign for mayor is for taxing income from profits, dividends, interest, or rents, including the elevated salaries of middle-class professionals, supervisors, and managers. There should be no tax on the wages of working people. Nor should working fishermen and working farmers be taxed.

There were three additional immediate demands that received a positive response in our petitioning campaign.

First, the demand that the labor movement fight for a massive program of government funded public works to ensure jobs for all at union scale. In addition to providing productive work to the jobless, such a program is needed to build housing, schools, hospitals and clinics, day-care centers, public transportation, libraries, gyms, pools, parks, and other social infrastructure the capitalists are allowing to crumble rather than fund out of their profits.

Second, labor must demand a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, binding on all employers as federal law. This would spread the available work around and allow workers, not just the capitalists, to enjoy the benefits of any advances in the productivity of our labor.

Third, in addition to raising the federal minimum wage, labor must demand that all wages be covered by full automatic cost-of-living protection. This too should be made a federal law. The capitalists' efforts to pull themselves out of a downturn in sales and profits--of which we are beginning to see today--can spark sudden and unexpected inflationary explosions that devastate the living standards and any small savings of working people. The same automatic adjustments must be guaranteed for all pension, health, workers compensation, black lung, welfare, and unemployment benefits.  
 
 
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