I write this Open Letter to the Indianapolis Living Wage Coalition not only as a former activist in it, but more tellingly, also as a low-wage worker who's had to accept pay cuts in order to keep his job.

Although now I’m only on the periphery of the Indianapolis Living Wage Coalition, I was actively involved in it when it first formed in the late 1990s and for a few years afterward, when it seemed that the Coalition might actually accomplish something for the great mass of low-paid workers in the Indianapolis area. Back then it regularly drew thirty or more to its monthly meetings, unlike now, when it’s lucky to draw even a third to a half of that. And back then, as the first Living Wage organization in Indiana, it inspired activists elsewhere, particularly in Bloomington and Lafayette/West Lafayette, to start up their own Living Wage coalitions, and in the case of Bloomington, actually obtain a city-wide Living Wage ordinance. Something the Indianapolis Living Wage Coalition has never achieved, although it did serve at one time as an unofficial lobbyist for Indianapolis-Marion County city and county government workers and contracted employees, and eventually, after arduous struggle, get their lowest-paid workers a raise. But that affected no other low-wage workers in the Indianapolis area, or for that matter, even elsewhere in Indiana.

And during this time I wrote a paper on Living Wage organizing and strategy that then-Coalition leader John Gibson thought was very good. In fact, so good, he told me, that he wasn’t going to circulate it within the Living Wage Coalition, for whom it was written, because it was too good: Your paper, he admonished, is so good that it would make others in the Coalition feel inferior because they couldn’t do anything as good as this. Further, he went on, you say that union organizing among the unorganized low-paid workers is essential to guaranteeing a Living Wage. But we in the Coalition don’t want to alienate any anti-union employers from supporting a Living Wage!

However, my paper was published by the Lafayette-area Community Times (September/October 2000, Vol. 7, No. 9-10) , and I was called upon that year also to give a report on Living Wage work in Indianapolis to the national office of the Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy (many of those in the Lafayette-area Living Wage organization were members of this group). And I was told by this body that I gave an “excellent” report. So, even though it had never been my intention to cross the “democracy means mediocrity” leadership of the Indianapolis Coalition, I ended up doing so anyway, and thus became “politically incorrect.” Reminds me of my days in Catholic grade and high schools: once again, too smart and talented for my own good!

Oh well. Being too smart and talented for my own good was not only what attracted me to the left in the first place, it’s what made me a respected leader of the New Left and anti-Vietnam War movements at Michigan State University in the 1960s, even granting me extensive, favorable mention in a well-regarded history of the anti-Vietnam War movement on non-elite college campuses, Campus Wars (New York University Press, 1993). But there’s not really a left here in Indy, only mild “progressives,” although a feisty group of actually left youth did set up an honest Movement bookstore here in justly-named Naptown, only to have these “progressives” undermine it at every point and demoralize these youth. But that’s another story.

The more relevant story for here is how I came to have to swallow major pay cuts in order to keep the job I’ve held since the fall of 2001, a job that not only requires a college degree, but also one at which I’ve consistently been considered an excellent, dependable and punctual worker. This job is one I have through a temp service, that of scoring the state school system standardized tests given yearly, such as ISTEP. Although it is only a seasonal job that provides employment only about half the year, it is one that I, along with many of my fellow workers, all bright college grads like myself (an engaging collection of highly intelligent and interesting square pegs in round holes, if I do say so), consistently found intellectually challenging and enjoyable, and one we all looked forward to returning to, despite its seasonality. Of course, part of being a square peg in a round hole in Indiana in the first place is to be college-educated, automatically excluded from many Indiana/Indianapolis employments as “overqualified,” and thus ending up as one of the most marginally-employed group of workers in the state. I started the job, as I mentioned, in the fall of 2001 at $10.50 an hour, and through my work received regular raises up through the summer of 2005, when I reached $11.50 an hour.

And then started the wage give-backs in order to keep the job. Since these standardized tests are mandated for school systems across the country by the Leave No Child Left Behind Act, a fiercely-competitive industry has developed for designing and scoring these tests, and many of these testing companies do not require college degrees as a prerequisite for scoring (wrongly, in my opinion; the challenging nature of scoring accurately really does draw consistently upon those intellectual and analytical skills that are learned only in college, not simply those learned in high school). So we were told at the fall of that year that we returning test scorers would all be required to take a 50¢ an hour pay cut, which we could gain back by receiving the incentive offered for perfect attendance during the scoring season (actually there are two seasons, one in the spring, and one in the fall). So I did manage to make up for my pay cut that year around. Then the next year, 2006, the attendance incentives were done away with, and we experienced scorers would all receive a flat pay rate of $10.50 an hour, while new hires would start at $10 an hour. This was a significant pay cut for many of the veterans who’d been scoring for years upon years and were truly expert, often working in training and supervisory capacities. For me personally, as the reader can see, it was a $1.00 an hour pay cut, and for a good friend of mine out there, a $1.25 an hour cut. New hires still came in at $10 an hour, but would go to $10.50 after completing a season. The next year, 2007, saw an actual pay raise for experienced scorers to $10.75 an hour, the rate for new hires still remaining frozen at $10 an hour. But then, for the new season starting in 2008, we’ve been told flatly that both experienced and new scorers will get only $10 an hour due to economic conditions. So now my wage rate is not only 15% below what I’d earned at my earnings peak in 2005, but even below what I’d originally started at when I was first hired in 2001!

But speaking of economic conditions, while it’s true that the value of the stock of the company we’re hired to work at did decline by over 50%, it’s also true that I’m paying well over $3 a gallon for the gas necessary to take me to and from work. I’m having my pay cut while my expenses rise. Just like many, many other workers not only in Indiana, but also across the nation.

And also, because I work all year around for the temp service and not just when I score tests, I’ve seen my average pay rates for other jobs through the service go from $10-11 an hour down to $9-10 an hour. But I have to take it, because I have to eat, clothe myself, and keep myself sheltered.

All of which shows there’s a crying need for an effective Living Wage organization not only in Indianapolis, but for effective Living Wage organizations across the country and nationwide as well, all actively working with other organizations and activists across the political spectrum who are committed to Living Wages for all workers, not just for some. In fact, the full name for the Indianapolis Coalition is Community-Faith-Labor Coalition for a Living Wage, and back in its early days, while it was never truly a coalition as such, it did have a number pf official sponsoring organizations from churches, community groups, political clubs, trade unions, and even a few businesses, all of whom were committed at least in theory to achieving a Living Wage across the board for those workers who were paid less than that. Back then the Coalition defined a Living Wage in 2001 as a minimum of $10 an hour, and the goal in theory was to get a Living Wage ordinance passed that would govern all Indianapolis workers, with the Living Wage rate rising a dollar per year. But that foundered on the rocks of the State Constitution, which denies home rule to Indiana cities. Then the Coalition threw itself into trying to raise the minimum wage, which has never been seen by anybody as a Living Wage; and what it wants to do now I haven’t any idea, and I doubt if those still active in this now truly nonexistent Coalition have any idea either. Because, from what I read in the Coalition's March 1, 2008 minutes, all that's really, materially on the agenda is talking about maybe doing something sometime down the line, and of course, forming committees to talk about doing so. Such a shame, when a truly active and vibrant Living Wage organization is so necessary; most especially now, in this present time of actual wage cuts, disappearing jobs, and major trade union weakness, and when the Living Wage rate that was $10 an hour in 2001 would be above $11.50 an hour for 2008. But workers in Indianapolis now often feel lucky if they’re making even $10 an hour. And while I’ve been given the retort to my wage condition raised above that the Coalition doesn’t concern itself with the pay rates of individuals, I’d like to point out that I’m an individual member of a group of over a thousand out there that scores those tests.

Frankly, I don’t see those fewer than ten to tweve or thirteen who attend the Coalition’s monthly meetings doing much of anything. From what I’ve seen, fully half of those attending are retirees over seventy, and I’ve never seen anyone at the Living Wage Coalition meetings who’s thirty or under since its early days. And also, the attendees are all middle-class, with the very people the Coalition is trying to help conspicuously absent. Moreover, those active now are mostly from church backgrounds, and while well-meaning, simply lack both the nerve and the organizing skills to build an effective Living Wage movement. Against the hardball economics of the business class they’ll pit—ethics. Which usually loses every time. Pit the Sermon on the Mount against Wal-Mart, and while Wal-Mart will give a polite nod to the Sermon on the Mount, it’ll pummel it regularly with the club of hardball economics and determined organization!

So now, as we enter into the recession of 2008, not only is a Living Wage movement needed more than ever—a genuine movement with active, determined community, union and low-worker support galvanizing consistent, determined action—it’s going to be harder to achieve. And if I were to re-involve myself, it wouldn’t be long before I would get ostracized again as a too-smart, too-talented, too politically incorrect, too wiling to speak my own mind troublemaker who needs to stay out of polite company. I wish I knew a better answer other than just to advise, “Keep on keepin’ on, but do it right this time,” but I don’t. I believe I have the skills, intelligence and erudition to be a most useful member of such a movement, but a real movement has to be just that. It can’t be just well-meaning sclerosis. And that’s what I see the Indianapolis Living Wage Coalition being at this time, and probably for some time to come.

George Fish
April 15, 2008