Signs of the Times #13: On What Grounds Can a Wage Be Just or Unjust? ft. Dan Graff, Ph.D.

Dan Graff, Ph.D., the Director of the Higgins Labor Program at the Center, joins us today to discuss the question, on what grounds can a wage be just or unjust? It’s a question he’s been exploring through his work with the Just Wage Working Group which brings together scholars and students to pursue the fundamental question of “the just wage” from a variety of disciplinary and practitioner perspectives. The working group uses Catholic social tradition as a framework to ask questions such as: is everyone in the economy participating? does everyone have minimum decent standards of living? and does everyone have economic opportunities to advance and participate in the decisions that affect their lives? They are currently working on developing an online Just Wage Tool to further these questions and foster dialogue in an extremely polarizing environment. At the start of the episode Dan also shares the work of the Higgins Labor Program as a whole and we discuss the recent nation wide teacher strikes.