Asheville, N.C., City Workers Get Living Wage

by James Parks, May 23, 2007

Asheville prides itself on being a tourist and fine arts center in the mountains of western North Carolina. Now the city that includes the largest and most extravagant private residence in the country—the Biltmore House—also can take pride in paying its employees a living wage.

The Asheville City Council voted 5–2 on May 22 to pay all full-time and part-time city employees a minimum of $10.86 an hour or $9.50 with benefits. The council also voted to make payment of the living wage a factor in selecting city contractors.

Council member Brownie Newman told the Asheville Citizen-Times a living wage is good for the city:

There are people who the wages they make working full-time are really not enough to support a family.

A coalition of religious organizations, charities, unions and other groups led the effort to get Asheville’s living wage approved.

A living wage helps to ensure low-wage workers and their families can live above the poverty level. Since 1994, more than 140 communities have enacted living wage laws, which cover a wide range of workers—municipal employees, those working for the city and county contractors, health care workers and college and university employees.

Last month, Maryland became the first state to require contractors to pay workers a living wage, the fruit of a months-long coalition campaign that included union members, religious leaders and civil rights advocates. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed the bill into law on May 9.

The new law requires service contractors doing business with the state to pay employees $11.30 an hour in urban areas and $8.50 an hour in rural areas. The state’s minimum wage is $6.15 an hour.

Earlier this year, the cities of Revere, Mass., and Memphis, Tenn., approved living wage laws for city workers and workers whose employers contract with the cities. In April, we told you how college students and worker activists at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts are mobilizing to win living wages on their campuses. (For more information, visit ACORN’s Living Wage Resource Center.)

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