The plans to build an upscale hotel downtown opens an opportunity for the greater Ithaca community to instill its economic values in the business world. As reported by The Ithacan on March 6, the hotel’s developer has offered to pay housekeeping staff — who are generally the lowest-paid — a living wage. The Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition is working to ensure this wage scale is applied to all of the proposed hotel’s future 51 employees.

A living wage is the amount of income necessary for an individual or family to earn to be able to meet basic needs without any assistance. Last year, the local Alternatives Federal Credit Union determined that the living wage in Tompkins County is $11.18 per hour. For a person working in a job with health benefits, the living wage is $9.83 per hour for a 40-hour week.

A 2006 survey by U.S. Census Bureau reported that about 18 percent of Tompkins County’s 100,000 residents live in poverty. The national poverty line is set at about $20,000 a year for a family of four — $400 less than the amount of money a single individual needs to earn annually to afford the basic standards of living. The living wage rate of $11.18 per hour equals $20,450.21 per year.

In Tompkins County, the median income per capita is $23,688. This figure is about $1,500 less than national figure, but the number of people living below the poverty line stands at more than 5 percentage points above the national statistic.

A family living in the county that earns a gross income of $20,650 will have $1,622.29 in disposable income for things like health care, transportation and childcare, estimates the Tompkins Community Action. The local nonprofit also estimated that health care for a family of four costs $5,000, transportation costs about $4,000 and child care costs about $7,000 — which puts said family almost $15,000 over budget.

Wage laws vary across the nation. The federal minimum wage currently stands at $5.85, and this summer it will rise to $6.55. New York state has raised its minimum wage values during the past few years. It is now $7.15 per hour, up from $5.15 in 2004.

But these values are all far too low; they stand at just more than half or three-quarters of the living wage. Five states have no minimum wage law at all; three states have minimum wages below the federal value.

Last May, Maryland became the first and only state to require all employers to pay a living wage — an example other states should follow. It is promising to see that groups like the Living Wage Coalition are working at a local level to promote fair pay for all workers.

The Living Wage Coalition’s involvement in the proposed hotel’s pay scale is part of a larger movement they have begun, called the Justice for Hotel Workers Campaign. It’s about ensuring that hotel workers — who are often overwhelmingly women, minorities, immigrants and single parents — are able to earn enough money to, at the very least, survive.

The proposed Commons hotel should guarantee that all workers will be paid a living wage as many Ithaca establishments have, and other businesses that open in town should follow suit as well.

From a business perspective, it may seem justified to pay menial workers less money, and this is often the argument used for keeping the minimum wages at very low values. But it is immoral to pay any worker at a rate which virtually guarantees that it will be impossible for them to make ends meet. Living wages are calculated to equal the bare minimum necessities: food, shelter, clothing, health care. As the coalition puts it, “paying workers less than they can live on is unfair to these workers, unjust in a society of great wealth and immoral in a community that values family and children.”