It’s good to have Republicans in charge of
several state governments, as well as our national government, because we
can always count on them to take care of our country’s big problems
— such as making sure that the wages of working people stay low.
Of course, President George W. Bush and the
congressional GOP have done their part on this score, rejecting an effort
earlier this year to increase the national minimum wage, which has been
stuck since 1997 at a paltry $5.15 an hour. That’s $10,500 a year
gross for full-time work — a poverty wage that mocks moral decency.
But I was particularly impressed by the extraordinary
move recently made by Georgia Republicans to enforce this low-wage ethic on
their state’s people. Gov. Sonny Perdue has now signed legislation
barring any city in the Peach State from requiring that corporations that
get city contracts to pay higher wages than the poverty pay set by the
federal government.
How peachy of Perdue! This means that the
state’s so-called conservative leaders have come out flat-footed
against local control, forcing local elected officials to comply with a
federal low-wage standard.
Of course, the governor and his gang are
corporatists, not conservatives. They were acting at the behest of
contractors who were apoplectic that the city of Atlanta has been
considering a living-wage ordinance that would have required government
contractors to pay at least $10.15 an hour to workers. That’s hardly
lavish pay — about $21,000 a year — but it would allow working
families a middle-class possibility and would restore some integrity to the
promise of America’s work ethic.
Luckily for the corporate powers, they’ve got
stalwarts such as Sonny Perdue ready and willing to abandon any pretense of
conservatism, usurp local authority, and stiff working families.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2005.
