Every so often, a natural theme emerges from the many blogs and offerings that I survey daily for the weekly United Methodist Insight. The July 25, 2013 issue presents one of those serendipities: the need for a living wage in America.
As I've said before, our family like so many others has been living with economic uncertainty since the Great Recession began in 2008. On July 24, we suffered another setback when my husband, our primary breadwinner, was laid off from his job as a pre-press computer design specialist at a local printer. Along with his paycheck we also lose our health insurance, again. The Affordable Care Act, AKA "Obamacare," can't start soon enough for us!
Some consolation comes from the knowledge that we're not alone in this desperate cycle. Millions of Americans have faced similar circumstances ever since Wall Street investment houses deemed "too big to fail" were saved with bailouts. Millions of dollars were given to those who made risky investments that have led to waves of foreclosures and layoffs. Amid this economic agony I continue to wonder: Why is the United Methodist Church mute and inactive about America's economic injustice, particularly when the eradication of poverty is one of the global denomination's four mission goals?
Two of this edition's writers, business consultant Dale G. Caldwell and the Rev. Morgan Guyton, illuminate the question of economic injustice from helpful perspectives. Mr. Caldwell, who holds prestigious business and economics degrees from Ivy League schools, points out how America's decision-makers are being misled by statistics that misrepresent the reality of Main Street commerce – just as the statistics of the UMC's "Vital Congregations" program misrepresents congregations' spiritual vitality by relying solely on membership numbers.
In light of Mr. Caldwell's essay, I felt it worthwhile to re-emphasize a recent blog post by Rev. Guyton, associate pastor of Burke United Methodist Church in Burke, VA. In it he critiques the UMC's own employment caste system of clergy and laity, in which lay employees of agencies and congregations fare badly in compensation compared with their ordained co-workers.
Both writers urge local churches to support the idea of a living wage, which is defined as compensation sufficient for a single worker to sustain the basic needs of a household of four people. To give an idea of how much this might be, the current federal minimum wage is $7.50 per hour. If the minimum had kept up with inflation, it would be slightly more than $10.70 per hour. The District of Columbia recently enacted a law requiring large retailers such as Walmart and Target to pay their employees a minimum living wage of $12 per hour. A report by the nonpartisan public policy think tank Demos lists six ways that such a wage would benefit the embattled U.S. economy, according to the Huffington Post.
I'm no economist, but even to this math-challenged matron it seems that there's a name for what's happening here: wage slavery. Workers are not paid what their time – what their lives and their industry – are truly worth. The current wave of union-busting state legislation in places such as Wisconsin and Ohio further deprive middle-class workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers of decent wages.
What's worse, the employers who account for more than 70 percent of the jobs in America are small businesses that are being squeezed out of existence by public policies that favor large multinational corporations over locally owned companies. Beyond a few well-intentioned resolutions that few read and fewer act upon, The United Methodist Church remains silent while its congregations in once-thriving communities wither away because people move to where they can find work that pays something … anything.
Why this ongoing silence about economic injustice from the church of John Wesley, whose own economic and social works are credited with rescuing England from the kind of bloody revolution that consumed France in the 18th century? Perhaps too many of us church members have bought into the big lies of certain political forces that deprive impoverished children of food and yet ensure staggering profits for agribusiness. Perhaps we church members fail to recognize that silent suffering of millions of their neighbors struggling each day to keep a roof over their families' heads and food on their tables. Perhaps we United Methodists are too distracted by red-flag efforts to stop reproductive choice for women and keep marriage away from gays. Perhaps we're just too busy with our own lives to notice.
God notices, however. God has always noticed, if the witness of the prophet Amos is to be credited:
"Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, 'When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.' The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. " - Amos 8: 4-7*
* New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, copyright 1989 by the Christian Education Committee of the National Council of Churches. Used by permission.