- Low wages keep restaurant workers in cycle of poverty, By Mackensey Lunsford, November 22, 2014, Asheville Citizen-Times: “Here’s what goes into a rough shift for Andrea Bourgeois, waitress at a Mills River restaurant. Scrub the bathroom floors. Deal with a finicky patron, or two — or more. Stay at it for $2.13 an hour. Leave with $20 in bills and some change. It’s not an uncommon scene for restaurant workers, who have seen hours cut and wages stay the same while some chains have enjoyed bottom-line growth. But as servers and kitchen workers battle a paycheck-to-paycheck life, smaller independent restaurants face challenges of their own, a problem highlighted in Asheville because of the size of its food industry…”
- Boosting minimum wage could be a net loss for some, By Anna Staver, November 23, 2014, Salem Statesman Journal: “Gov. John Kitzhaber wants to raise the minimum wage. The easy part would be passing legislation. Which means the hard part isn’t convincing Republicans or business advocacy groups to go along with the idea, it’s explaining to minimum wage advocates how raising wages for low-income Oregonians without adjusting the social safety net could do more harm than good…”
- Nebraska’s ‘real’ minimum wage will be nation’s highest, By Zach Pluhacek, November 26, 2014, Lincoln Journal Star: “Nebraska’s minimum wage is on track to top the charts. The $9 hourly rate that goes into effect in 2016 will equal about $10 an hour when adjusted for cost of living, which should make it the highest effective statewide minimum wage in the nation. The effective minimum wage is based on an analysis of state minimums and federal cost-of-living data from 2012, the most recent year for which data are available…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty