Hunter: Iowa must turn around anemic economic growth

At 2.4 percent, Iowa is now slightly ahead of Hawaii for the lowest unemployment rate in the country.  But all is not roses for Iowa’s jobs report.  Much of Iowa’s new jobs is a rising mix of low-wage jobs and part-time and contract work. For all of Gov. Kim Reynolds' ballyhoo, middle class Iowans have seen little relief for their wages, which have been stagnant for decades while dealing with steadily rising prices.

What hasn’t been stagnant over the years, however, is Iowa’s widening income gap.  When adjusted for inflation, the bottom fifth of earners saw practically no growth in household income from 2006 to 2016, a Des Moines Register analysis of census data found. The poorest 20 percent saw household incomes inch up from $13,798 to $13,848 in 2016 dollars — less than one half of 1 percentage point.

Conversely, the top 20 percent of Iowa households saw their average income shoot up 12 percent in real terms over the same period, increasing from $155,764 to $177,612.

For the very richest, the top 5 percent of households, inflation-adjusted household incomes improved by 16 percent, from $262,251 in 2006 to $311,070 in 2016. 

And for women it’s even worse. Iowa women earn $10,637 less than men on average — one of the nation's wider gaps in pay, according to a recently released analysis.

Iowa may have a low unemployment rate – and that is good news – but it is more than offset by the wage insecurities suffered by Iowans every day.

There is no greater need for Iowa today than to have the security of a living wage that has the possibility to afford a better life for a family. There should be no greater priority for the Iowa Legislature than to set in motion the tools to achieve that security.

As more and more economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few, Iowans question whether our economic system will continue to work for them. They wonder whether their children will have the opportunity for a better life than they themselves enjoyed.  At a time in which the economy has grown at a slow but steady pace, many families continue to experience economic anxiety.

Iowa needs to put in place a comprehensive plan that lifts individual incomes and creates higher paying jobs. There are steps we as a Legislature can, and should, put in place right now to achieve these objectives and put in motion economic security for all Iowans.

These are some of the policies that we can put in place right now to minimize income inequality:

Invest in education: High school graduates earn, on an average 43 percent more that high school drop outs. One of the key factors of new companies moving into an area is the level of education. Divorce rates are lower as education levels rise. Crime rates drop, drug use lowers, and there is less need for social services. There is a reason that education should be this Legislature’s No. 1 priority.  It is what will best serve our children and our state for decades to come. Education is the starting point for raising the quality of life for all of Iowa. And yet education has been woefully underfunded for the past nine years. This must stop.

Raise the minimum wage: A job should be a bridge out of poverty, an opportunity to make a living from work, an opportunity to bring dignity to one’s life. But for about 300,000 Iowans – Iowans who work hard, play by the rules and do what is right – there is no dignity. For those people working at or around Iowa’s minimum wage of only $7.25 an hour there is only poverty.

But if the minimum wage were increased to $12 per hour, with annual cost of living increases, about 300,000 Iowans would receive an hourly wage increase. Of the workers who would benefit from the increase:

• 75 percent are adults over the age of 20.
• 58 percent are female.
• 42 percent are full-time workers and another 34 percent work between 20 and 34 hours per week.
• 40 percent of minimum wage earners are the sole breadwinner in their families.
• 20 percent are parents to some 94,000 children.

Ensure good public jobs: Two years ago the Republican majority took away the basic civil right for over 183,000 public sector employees to have a voice in their job. They did their best to take away the right for those employees to make a living, to be able to support their family and have time to be there for them and to form and maintain a union. This must be reversed immediately.

We should also oppose privatization of state, county and municipal government jobs. Our objective must be to keep quality public jobs public, while emphasizing efficiency.

Make it easier to join a union: Today, the vast majority of Iowans are employed “at will." This means that an employee may be fired for any reason whatsoever – or for no reason at all. This stifles an employee’s ability to negotiate a fair wage, to protect their work safety and stability and to have any kind of voice on their job.

Unions continue to serve the same purpose for which they were originally founded. CEO and executive compensation is skyrocketing, while the middle class suffers from layoffs, unemployment and stagnant wages. Through negotiations and a continued dialogue with the employer, unions work for increased wages, raising the standard of living for the working class, ensuring safe working conditions, increasing benefits for both workers and their families and giving the employee a voice in their profession.

At the same time Iowa is making it more difficult to form and participate in unions, employers are trying to shed responsibility for providing health insurance, good pension coverage, reasonable work hours and job safety protections. Additionally, companies are making workers' jobs and incomes less secure through downsizing, part-timing, contracting out, and sending jobs off-shore.

As the nature of work changes, working people need the collective voice and bargaining power unions provide to keep employers from making the workplace look as it did in the early 19th century.

Strengthen apprenticeship programs: Iowa has a small union trade apprenticeship program that recognizes the necessity to train workers for skilled vocational jobs, and we should expand it. Apprenticeship prepares workers to master occupational skills and undertake productive work for their employer, earn a salary, receive training primarily through supervised work‐based learning, and take academic instruction that is related to the apprenticeship occupation.

We can turn around Iowa’s anemic growth. Our economic security will be in good hands when all Iowans have a chance to earn better wages and keep more of what they earn, spend that money in their community’s economy and be part of a growing, vibrant economy as a result.

This is just a start. But it is a start. We, as a Legislature, need to do more than just provide rhetoric that will sound good for the next election. What we need to do is take the steps that will actually change the way Iowa works and earn back the trust of working middle class families who have come to believe our hearts are elsewhere.

Only then will we have a state that works for all men and women who call Iowa home.