Labor advocates, civil rights leaders, and small business owners came together at the New York Hilton Midtown during the NAACP’s annual board meeting last week. They showed up to talk about what they described as the “unfinished economic legacy of slavery.”
They were challenging the United States’ subminimum wage system, which they say needs to be abolished.
Employees who work for tips and people employed while incarcerated can trace the origins of the wage system they are paid under back to Emancipation. When Black enslavement ended, Black workers were often pushed into tip-dependent jobs that offered no guaranteed pay. This legacy, speakers argued, persists today.
“During the Civil Rights Movement, activists desegregated lunch counters, but the wage system behind those counters remains divided,” said one advocate, in reference to the federal minimum tipped wage of just $2.13 an hour — a rate unchanged for decades, which disproportionately affects Black and Brown workers. Incarcerated workers are also paid as little as $1 per hour, a practice many describe as a form of modern-day slavery.
New York has the potential to lead the way by passing a series of Living Wage For All bills that would remove all subminimum-wage exceptions and raise the minimum wage to at least $30 in New York and $25 nationwide. The press conference, held during the 100th anniversary celebration of Black History Month, was a rallying cry for the Living Wage For All campaign.
Jerika Richardson, senior vice president of Equitable Justice and Strategic Initiatives at the National Urban League, pointed out the connection between wage injustice and racial injustice. “The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen more than 30% since 1968. There is not a single county in America where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. These are not abstract statistics — they are the lived experiences of millions of workers, workers who deserve so much more,” she said. “Economic justice is Civil Rights work.”
“We here at the NAACP stand with One Fair Wage,” said Robin Williams, a veteran labor organizer. “This is a class fight. They don’t care what color your skin is, and they really don’t care if you’re female — even our children suffer behind these low wages. We are not going to continue to vote for people who lie to us, then get into office and forget us.”
Small business owner and One Fair Wage board member Seth Rasseljitz said, “The subminimum wage does not protect restaurants — it destabilizes them. It forces workers to go through life on unpredictable income and stress, which drives turnover and destroys culture. Stable wages create stable teams, and stable teams create stable businesses. If your business model collapses when your workers earn a guaranteed wage, the problem is not the wage — it’s the model.”
“The sin of America,” said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, an NAACP board member and director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, “is that we are allowing this inequitable wage system — this virtual debt slavery — to continue for people who are incarcerated, people of color, people with disabilities, and young people. We are to speak up and advocate for the poor. Here we are, One Fair Wage, NAACP and our allies in labor, speaking up to demand that this become a country of justice.”
Donna Hylton, a representative of the 13th Forward Coalition, noted that, “During COVID, it was incarcerated individuals who made the hand sanitizers to help keep everyone safe. But they are paid ten, twenty, thirty-three cents an hour. One in three families are being forced into debt to care for an incarcerated loved one.”
Theodore Moore, the executive director of The Alliance for a Greater New York, connected labor and racial justice to the cost-of-living crisis in New York. “If you account for housing, food, transportation, and health care, the annual cost of living is over $87,000. The minimum wage is $17.00. Do the math. People are tired of just getting by. Everyone is worthy of all the necessities of life. We want to push for a living wage right here in New York State and then make it a model for the rest of the country.”