With infection rates down, vaccine rates up and the relief bill passed through Congress, it is finally starting to look like we are approaching the beginning of the end of COVID-19. The pandemic that has gripped us for a year now is finally starting to ease up, but America does not have the luxury of relaxing in its wake.
Instead, we are quickly approaching a reckoning for our next nationwide public health crisis: poverty. Specifically, poverty caused by our lawmakers’ refusals to raise the minimum wage from $10.10 to a living wage.
According to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s Self-Sufficiency Income Standard Report, a single adult working at minimum wage has to work 75 hours per week — two full-time jobs — just to have their basic needs met without government assistance. About 42% of Hawaii families don’t earn enough to make ends meet, forcing them to make difficult decisions about what to go without.
Full-time workers earning starvation wages must live in substandard housing, skip meals and go without medicine, leading to chronic stress, significant health problems, and shortened lifespans. Some 62% of Hawaii residents have had to skip medical procedures or other health care because of the cost, which causes more dangerous and more expensive problems in the long run.
Poverty in Hawaii is multifaceted, and there is no easy solution, but the data is clear. Increasing the wage workers are paid has dramatic effects on their ability to make ends meet. Besides the benefits to the health and well-being of our community, raising the wage would also increase the state’s possible tax revenue, and decrease the number of residents who would need to seek help from government assistance programs such as Medicaid. A true living wage is not just the right thing to do, it is also the only sensible way forward.
Out of the many bills introduced this legislative session that proposed raising the wage, only one remains: Senate Bill 676. As it stands, it would raise the minimum wage to $12 in July of 2022, but this bill can still be amended to provide workers a living wage. Democrats nationally are pushing for a $15 wage by 2025, and with a Democratic supermajority and the highest cost of living in the country, Hawaii should be able to do that and more.
We as citizens will have to fight if we want this bill to pass. It would be so easy for state Rep. Richard Onishi, chairman of the House Labor Committee, to just allow SB 676 to die along with all the many other bills he refused to even hear this session. As citizens of Hawaii, if we want to stand for empathy and justice, instead of apathy and harm, we must call or email Onishi and House Speaker Scott Saiki to demand that SB 676 receive a final floor vote.
Make it clear that we will continue to fight for this and every minimum wage bill until it reaches a level that allows a full time worker to afford healthcare, prescriptions, nutritious food, shelter, and all their basic needs — a true living wage.
I am not willing to sit by and do nothing, condemning our communities to poverty with my silence. It is time for all Hawaii residents to decide if they will support our working class, or continue to allow our representatives to stand in the way of a healthier Hawaii.
Natasha A. White is a hospitality professional and labor rights advocate.