The Eugene Springfield Solidarity Network, along with local community organizations, rallied at the Eugene City Hall on Thursday to support funding for an ordinance championed by the Eugene Living Wage Campaign as well as to recognize the efforts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 34th anniversary of his assassination.
The rally couldn’t have been more timely.
On April 15, Eugene’s budget committee will be choosing what programs or ordinances will receive a slice of the $90 million budget.
“A great way for us to set a good example for the broad community is for the city government to say we’re not going to use dollars to pay poverty wages for full-time work,” City Councilor David Kelly said. He added that although the ordinance is crucial to the livability of people in Eugene, the ordinance might be hard to pass considering it is competing with police, fire and recreation, which are all part of the general fund.
Charles Dalton, President Emeritus of the Eugene chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, compared Eugene’s poverty situation to a quote that Rev. King left in a speech in 1967. According to Dalton, King said:
“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization; when men ate each other, when they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
Dalton added that we, as a society, have confused human rights with property rights, given that Oregon’s poverty rate is the highest in the nation. According to ESSN, 70 percent of those in poverty are working full time.
The Eugene living wage ordinance will require the city of Eugene, large city contractors that have bids larger than $10,000 and private businesses that receive subsidies of $25,000 or more,
to pay their workers a wage of $11.42 per hour plus health insurance. Businesses that do not provide health insurance will have to provide wages equaling $14.28 per hour.
The ordinance, if passed, will cost $360,000 in the first year and $829,000 in its final phase three years from now.
Businesses such as Hynix will be directly affected by the ordinance because of the subsidies they receive. According to a survey by the Lane Workforce Board, the average pay at Hynix is $9.00 an hour, which is far below the wage proposed by the ordinance.