The call for a living wage
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 25:35-36)
“The current minimum wage ($10.10 an hour) is a struggle wage; it’s a wage that inhibits people from providing for their very basic needs. When people are working multiple jobs in order to feed and clothe themselves, find it difficult to pay their bills working full-time at a decent entry-level job, or are living in a home with several generations of family members because the cost of living in Hawaiʻi is far higher than what they are being paid, a living wage needs to be reevaluated.
“Raising the minimum wage in Hawaiʻi is not just necessary, it is vital.”
These are the words of 23-year old Kilinahemalie Ling, who will graduate in December from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has paid her bills, while studying, with the help of a slightly higher than minimum wage job. But looming on the horizon is the intimidating reality of loan repayments.
She testified recently in support of raising the minimum wage to a true living wage. Her words are a cry for help. A cry that the Catholic social justice tradition tells us we have a moral obligation to respond to.
Citing that tradition, Eva Andrade, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Catholic Conference, reminded lawmakers that “raising the minimum wage is about dignity and it is about justice. It is clear from more than a century of Catholic teaching that work is at the heart of the social question, at the heart of human dignity. We must, as a society, endorse and support the potential benefits and freedoms of a market economy; but this effort must be oriented toward protecting human life and dignity, and advancing the common good.”