Which U.S. Cities Adopt Living Wage Ordinances? Predictors of Adoption of a New Labor Tactic, 1994-2006

Abstract

This article investigates predictors of living wage ordinance adoption in U.S. cities. The authors build on previous research by including all cities with more than 25,000 people (1,072 cities), adding new variables to measure favorable political context, use of event history analysis (Cox regression) to analyze temporal effects in diffusion, and distinguishing between predictors of early and late adoption. General political context, city size, and municipal expenditures were significant predictors, while grievances, presence of a local ACORN chapter, union density, and form of city government were not significant. Density of nonlabor progressive associations and history of progressive activism were major predictors of policy adoption.

Aiming at Half of the Target: An Argument to Replace Poverty Thresholds With Self-Sufficiency, or “Living Wage” Standards

“…Unfortunately, the Living Wage Resource Center and its website are also gone (Swarts & Vasi, 2011). It does not appear that another organization has taken up the role of continuing to collect aggregate information on the living wage movement.…”

Examining media markets’ influence on the diffusion of antismoking legislation in US counties

“…Although multiple studies have examined the diffusion of public policies (Boehmke and Witmer 2004;Bouché and Volden 2011;Karch 2007;Volden 2006, 2008;Berry and Baybeck 2005;Boushey 2010), studying local policy diffusion (Godwin and Schroedel 2000;Rincke 2007;Swarts and Vasi 2011) has enabled researchers to isolate specific diffusion mechanisms (Shipan and Volden 2008). However, these mechanisms have focused mainly on policymakers and the decision-making process (Pacheco 2012); much less is known about how policy ideas and information are transferred across jurisdictions (Eyestone 1977).…”

In‐work poverty and the living wage in the United Kingdom: a geographical perspective

“…Here, civic leaders were encountering increasing numbers of workers in their soup kitchens and community outreach facilities and they launched a campaign to establish a living wage for all those employed on local government contracts (Fine ; Schoenberger ; Walsh ). The success and profile of this campaign, and its subsequent adoption by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), facilitated its transmission across the cities and counties of the USA, covering as many as 140 different jurisdictions by 2010 (Swarts and Vasi ). In most of these cases, the demand for a living wage focused on ensuring that the workers employed to conduct publicly‐funded duties were not paid poverty wages and as a result, the ordinances have covered relatively small numbers of workers.…”

“…In most of these cases, the demand for a living wage focused on ensuring that the workers employed to conduct publicly‐funded duties were not paid poverty wages and as a result, the ordinances have covered relatively small numbers of workers. However, the campaign has also had a much broader impact by reframing ‘wages as a moral and social justice issue’ (Swarts and Vasi , 766), thereby opening up the issue of low pay to social justice campaigners far beyond the traditional trade union movement. The demand has helped to stimulate a wider desire to address economic injustice that was recently exemplified by the Occupy movement.…”