Last week, The Commons reported on a report by the Maryland-based ViTAL Economy Alliance (VE) that showed Windham County's workers earn significantly less money than their peers around the region.
If you want to know why Windham County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, lost a significant number of its population between the ages of 25 and 44, that is the biggest reason.
People in their prime earning years, people who are critical to the growth of an area's economy, are leaving southern Vermont because it has become harder and harder to earn a living wage here.
That topic came up last Wednesday at a gathering in Brattleboro of members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR), a business group whose mission it is to support businesses that subscribe to what is known as the “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profit - taking care of human and natural resources, as well as making money.
Richard French, president of The Works Bakery Cafe, the featured speaker, is no johnny-come-lately to the idea of social responsibility. He opened his first store in Manchester, Vt., in 1988 and has been a VBSR member for more than 20 years.
The Works now has six stores in three states, including Main Street in Brattleboro. Although it is not really a fast food outlet, that is the sector of the food and hospitality industry under which the business finds itself categorized.
When asked what keeps him up at night, French said it was his inability to pay a living wage to his employees.
The food and hospitality sector is traditionally the lowest paid industry, but French said he is trying to do right by his workers. He said the average wage of his full-time employees is $12.47 per hour, and they receive health insurance, paid vacation time, and other benefits.
Compared to other restaurant workers, full-time employees at The Works are well-compensated. Part of the reason why is out of self-interest. French said the average employee turnover in the fast food industry is 300 percent per year. Offering his employees a decent wage and benefit package helps reduce turnover and improves worker morale.
But French said it is getting increasingly difficult to offer these benefits because of the rising cost of everything else associated with his business.
Despite incorporating energy-efficiency measures in all his stores, his energy costs have doubled over the past year. Food costs keep rising, too. And where he used to offer health insurance to all his employees, he has had to cut back coverage to just his full-time workers.
“In our industry, we look like a poster child, but when I look at [my worker's] checks, I want to cry,” French said. “We're doing a lot of great things, but our margins are getting squeezed every year from every direction. And I know this is a hard, physically stressful job. I've got 80 people in here, busting their butts seven days a week; what they're doing doesn't provide a livable wage.”
According to the Vermont Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office, a single adult living in Vermont needs to earn at least $15.23 per hour to meet his or her basic needs - food, housing, transportation, insurance, and other expenses.
That's roughly $610 a week, before taxes, or $31,720 per year. That's nearly double the current Vermont minimum wage of $8.15 per hour, or $16,952 per year.
How many jobs in the Brattleboro area pay $31,720 or more per year? Not many, and those jobs that do pay in that range require education and special skills.
Windham County has survived to this point because of an influx of people in their 50s and 60s who see that our region offers a desirable place to live and, ultimately, to retire. These newcomers have money and can afford the cost of living here.
But for younger Vermonters, the hopes of staying here and earning enough money to buy a home and raise a family seem remote. While the quality of life here is wonderful, it is tough to enjoy it if you are working multiple jobs just to get by.
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The Southern Vermont Economic Development Strategy (SeVEDS), the regional economic committee that is trying to develop strategies to create new jobs and raise the average wage of the region's workers, needs to ask itself these questions.
• If an employer like The Works, which is committed to being a socially responsible business and offering wages and benefits above the norm, can't afford to pay its workers a livable wage, what will bringing in new businesses, who may not share these ideas and ideals, really do to improve the region's economy?
• What can be done on the state and local levels to support employers who want to pay a livable wage?
• Health-care costs are crushing businesses big and small. Without a concerted effort to reform our health care system, how will businesses survive?
• Socially responsible businesses are being established and are thriving in Vermont. What can be done to attract more of them?
In short, developing an environment where jobs that pay a livable wage is the norm, not the exception, and requires public policy decisions that support socially responsible employers.
Other industrialized nations are moving in this direction, but the United States is not. This nation is engaged in the race to the bottom, as jobs get exported overseas and wages and benefits are steadily being cut.
Vermont does not have to follow this path. The good news is that there are examples all over the state of companies that are meeting the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. We need to encourage more of them, and attract the entrepreneurs who want to create new businesses here.