Living Wage Movements: Global Perspectives

Living wage activism has spanned time and space, reaching across decades and national boundaries. Conditions generating living wage movements early in the twentieth century have resurfaced in the twenty-first century, only on a global scale: "sweated" labor, macroeconomic instability, and job insecurity. The original essays in the volume assess the movement for higher living standards in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. Each of the individual chapter authors has extensive experience in academia or research institutes, in public policy or in the labor movement. A variety of innovative efforts to achieve living wages are profiled. Minimum wage increases, labor code activism, low pay campaigns, and fair wage clauses, for example, have begun to reverse a growing two-tiered labor market. Women, workers from racial and ethnic minority groups, and employees in service and sales occupations have been noteworthy beneficiaries. Upon reviewing the empirical evidence, the book's contributors makestrong cases both for and against living wage activism. The effective blend of historical, contemporary and global perspectives provides opportunities for teachers, scholars, and activists to evaluate how we can address low pay at the organizational and macroeconomic levels.