Two other members with similar constitutencies are expected to be sympathetic. Only six votes are required for passage. A living-wage ordinance also will be offered to the Pulaski County Quorum Court. Over the last 40 years, the statutory minimum wage has not kept up with rising costs, nor rising productivity by workers. That is below the poverty line for a family of three.
Larger families stay below the poverty line even with two minimum-wage workers.
And the poverty line was originally intended to be an income level that allowed some slight degree of dignity, not mere survival in the most degraded conditions. Fulltime work at the minimum wage brought entry into the bottom of the middle class. By the 1970s the minimum wage for two workers had dropped to 90 percent of the necessary income. Now it provides less than 70 percent. Today more than 12 million fulltime year-round workers are paid wages beneath those needed to support a minimally decent standard of living for households with children.