An ACORN organizer prepares signs for the New Orleans minimum wage campaign in February 2002.

Welcome to ACORN's Living Wage Resource Center website. What you will find here is a brief history of the national living wage movement, background materials such as ordinance summaries and comparisons, drafting tips, research summaries, talking points, and links to other living wage-related sites. (Please also visit www.raisewages.org for the latest on minimum wage ballot initiatives across the country).

Visitors to the web site should keep in mind that there is no magic formula for a successful living wage campaign. Every campaign is different -- dependent on the campaign leaders and their constituencies, local politics and power dynamics, the campaign coalition's interests and scope, resources, experience, timelines, local and regional economies, etc.

Clearly, there is much to learn about running a living wage campaign that cannot be contained in a web site. However, as the movement chalks up wins, and leaders and organizers gain experience and become more savvy, we are building a body of material and experience that should be shared among living wage organizers everywhere.

ACORN and Living Wage

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income people with over 200,000 members in over 90 cities. For 35 years, ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education, improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living wages.

Over the last decade, ACORN chapters have been involved in over fifteen living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won living wage or minimum wage ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver, Chicago, Cook County, New Orleans, Detroit, New York City, Long Island, Sacramento and San Francisco.

In addition, we have led coalitions to win statewide minimum wage increases in five states - including the huge 71% ballot victory in Florida in November 2004 - which delivered a raise to an estimated 850,000 workers. ACORN is following up that exciting victory by promoting a National Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage through states and cities. This campaign includes cutting edge efforts to win citywide minimum wage increases - as well as ambitious statewide minimum wage ballot initiatives in the battleground states of OH, MO, AZ and CO for November 2006.

In 1998, ACORN established the Living Wage Resource Center to track the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to living wage organizers all over the country.

ACORN has hosted three National Living Wage Training Conferences, drawing organizers from scores of different living wage campaigns across the country to learn from each other about elements of a living wage campaign such as building local coalitions, doing research, working with city council, developing message and responding to the opposition, preparing for living wage implementation fights, and using living wage campaigns to build community and labor membership and power.

We encourage campaign organizers to contact Jen Kern at ACORN's Living Wage Resource Center at 202-547-2500 or natacorncam@acorn.org for more materials, to discuss specific campaign strategy, and to get referrals to experienced living wage organizers who have been or are currently involved in living wage and minimum wage campaigns in cities and states all over the country.

Latest Victories

Brookline MA - May 2005 - The citizens of Brookline Massachusetts overwhelming passed article 19 on Tuesday 24 May. This article proposed and researched by a group of young citizens from Brookline High School - Students Action for Justice and Education, amends the towns Living Wage bylaws to cover employees of contractors working on contracts for the town. Coverage of contractors is scheduled to be phased in over three years; in 2006 the bylaws will be extended to contractors holding contracts of $25,000 or more; in 2007 to contracts of $10,000 or more; and finally in 2008 to contracts of $5,000 or more. The current living wage for Brookline is $10.72, it is set to rise to $11.15 in 2006.

Syracuse NY - May 2005 - On May 23rd 2005 the City of Syracuse Common Council unanimously passed a Living Wage Ordinance mandating covered employers pay a wage of $10.08/hour to employees receiving healthcare benefits and $11.91 for those without (to be eligible to pay the lower wage, employers must pay at least 64% of their employees health care costs). The ordinance applies to contractors with the city and their sub-contractors, working on city contracts worth at least $20,000 and who have more than 5 employees. Only employees working 30 years or more are covered. City employees are not covered by the ordinance. The ordinance also indexes the wage rate to the CPI-U with annual increases to be effective April each year, and mandates employees receive 12 paid days off. A Living Wage Advisory Board will be set up to monitor the ordinance which takes effect 120 days after passage (passed 23 May 2005) and applies to all contracts new or renewed after that date.

NOW AVAILABLE:

The 2003 updated version of the comprehensive 225-page guide for organizing living wage campaigns: Living Wage Campaigns: An Activist's Guide to Building the Movement for Economic Justice (by David Reynolds of Wayne State University Labor Studies Center with the ACORN Living Wage Resource Center). This nitty gritty guide includes profiles of successful campaigns, chapters on how to build a coalition, conduct research, respond to the opposition, draft an ordinance, plan a larger electoral strategy, a review of the available research on the impact of living wage laws, an appendix of helpful living wage resources and much more.

To order the guide, send a check or money order for $15 (payable to ACORN) to Denise Johnson at ACORN: 739 8th St. SE; Washington, DC 20003. Substantial portions of this guide are available online in PDF format at www.laborstudies.wayne.edu.