The Pandemic Intensifies the Need for a Just Wage Economy

January 21, 2022

The economic earthquakes prompted by the evolving pandemic keep producing unpredicted developments in markets and workplaces, as well as catchy terms like “essential workers,” “the Great Resignation,” and “Striketober,” as pundits rush to capture the experiences of our stressed out labor force. Despite the novelty of our vocabulary, however, the fractures in the current labor landscape actually expose more enduring fault lines of stagnant wages, deteriorating work conditions, and increasing inequality long neglected by policymakers and employers.

This more chronic crisis facing American workers was what propelled the formation of our Just Wage Initiative five years ago, as we gathered an interdisciplinary group of scholars and students from across the University to consider how we might apply Catholic social tradition to pressing labor problems. Convening regularly in an attempt to fuse competing theological, historical, economical, sociological, and legal approaches while still foregrounding the human persons at the center of our employment relationships, we also workshopped our evolving ideas in presentations at multiple academic conferences and community venues, including our hosting of a group of national scholarly and advocacy experts at an inaugural Just Wage Symposium in Washington, DC, in 2018 (which featured a keynote address by Congressman Brendan Boyle ‘99).

Presenters at the 2021 Just Wage Forum discuss critical questions around the concept of the just wage.

In 2020, as the first wave of COVID-19 peaked, we formally launched the Just Wage Framework, an online tool designed to promote workplace dignity, labor solidarity, and the common good by encouraging discernment and dialogue among the diverse stakeholders responsible for our economic decision-making. And in 2021, we sponsored a virtual Just Wage Forum featuring leading scholars and practitioners who addressed the pathways toward, and roadblocks hindering, the realization of a more just economy. We encourage stakeholders from across the economic spectrum to visit the Higgins Labor Program website to engage the Just Wage Tool and recordings of these stimulating conversations.

Today, as the COVID-19 economy continues to amplify and exacerbate the challenges facing workers, there has never been a more urgent time for a nationwide reckoning with our long-term labor crises. We hope that the Just Wage Framework provides the framing, resources, and vision to help re-energize the critical national conversations necessary to point us toward a fairer, more inclusive, indeed more just economy. In the meantime, we begin the next phase of the Just Wage Initiative, researching the concrete and exciting ways particular employers, unions, advocacy organizations, faith communities, and policymakers are pushing us all in a just wage direction — whether in the US or internationally. Stay tuned for more details soon.