Orange County is progressive but also expensive: residents believe the community should be open and accessible to everyone, but there’s also a lot of upward pressure driving up the cost of living. What can we do to make our community more affordable? There are steps we can take to bring the cost of living down – but we can also address the issue by working to bring wages up.
That’s where the Orange County Living Wage Project comes in. Officially launched in November and inspired by similar efforts in Asheville and Durham, the OCLWP is an effort to get local employers to pledge to pay their employees a living wage.
A “living wage” is defined as “the minimum amount that a worker must earn to afford their basic necessities” without having to rely on public or private assistance. Given the cost of living in Orange County, that works out to $12.75 an hour (or $11.25 with employer-provided health insurance), assuming a 40-hour work week.
That’s significantly more than the legal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour. “Nearly 40% of workers in Orange County earn less than a living wage,” says the OCLWP on its website. “As a result, a large portion of county residents are, in fact, working poor.”
City and county governments in North Carolina do not have the authority to set their own minimum wages – so the OCLWP is working to encourage local businesses to raise wages on their own. Nearly three dozen businesses, representing hundreds of employees, have already signed up and taken the pledge to pay all their workers a living wage.
OCLWP chair Susan Romaine and steering committee member Mark Marcoplos spoke with Aaron Keck Thursday on WCHL.
Romaine and Marcoplos say a living wage is a win-win all around: not only is it a boon for workers who currently struggle to make ends meet, it’s also good for employers – as higher wages raise employee morale while reducing absenteeism and turnover. (Call it the “Costco effect”: employers who raise wages often find their profits going up, due to the resulting increase in worker productivity.) And people who make more money also tend to spend more money – which boosts the local economy as a whole.
Comments on Chapelboro are moderated according to our Community Guidelines