Abstract

The struggles of low-wage workers have increasingly become the focus of public debate, legislative activity, and widespread advocacy. Advocacy can be viewed from the vantage point of claims-making, that is, how individuals and groups define and shape a social problem to influence policy. This paper describes the wage-related claims posted online by 17 experts who testified to a City Council Wage Review Committee in Pittsburgh. Our primary aim was to understand how experts constructed their claims; secondarily, we were interested in the rationales they offered for raising wages. We thematically analyzed the testimonies to identify how they shaped and defined their claims in favor of increasing wages. Experts described the challenges faced by minimum wage workers and their families as well as by the community. They cited economic considerations, social and economic justice concerns, and moral justifications for raising the minimum wage, often combining arguments. Social work advocates are important claims-makers, yet how they “speak truth to power” is not often systematically assessed. Our analysis suggests social work advocates must be prepared to provide multiple arguments and to put a human face to any data presented. Appeals should be made to both the heads and hearts of decision-makers, while keeping social and economic justice arguments front and center.

Highlights

  • The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, set in 2009 (U.S Department of Labor, n.d.), is not enough to keep a full-time, year-round single worker above the federal poverty threshold, no less a family (Cooper, 2017)

  • We examined the types of claims they made about lowwage hospital service workers’ wages and the rationales they offered in favor of raising the minimum wage

  • Given our focus on claims-making by social actors, we present our findings in relation to the general categories represented by those testifying, rather than by individual names; this rationale applied to the hospital systems, which are identified as Hospital System A and Hospital System B

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Summary

Introduction

Lowwage workers and their families frequently have problems accessing health care services and purchasing medications, resulting in more negative health outcomes (Heflin, 2017; Lenhart, 2017; Neckerman et al, 2016). To assuage these hardships, low-wage workers may seek financial and in-kind benefits from public sources or non-profit organizations (Allegretto et al, 2013; Guo, 2012; Purtell et al, 2012)

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