An ACORN organizer prepares signs for the New Orleans minimum wage campaign in February 2002.

Welcome to ACORN's living wage website. What you will find here is a brief history of the national living wage movement, background materials such as ordinance summaries and comparisons, drafting tips, research summaries, talking points, and links to other living wage-related sites.

Visitors to the web site should keep in mind that there is no magic formula for a successful living wage campaign. Every campaign is different -- dependent on the campaign leaders and their constituencies, local politics and power dynamics, the campaign coalition's interests and scope, resources, experience, timelines, local and regional economies, etc.

Clearly, there is much to learn about running a living wage campaign that cannot be contained in a web site. However, as the movement chalks up wins, and leaders and organizers gain experience and become more savvy, we are building a body of material and experience that should be shared among living wage organizers everywhere.

ACORN and Living Wage

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income people with over 150,000 member families organized into 800 neighborhood chapters in 65 cities across the country. Since ACORN's founding in Arkansas in 1970, ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education, improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living wages.

Over the past nine years, ACORN chapters have been involved in over twenty living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver, Chicago, Cook County, IL, New Orleans, San Francisco, Sacramento and New York City and have participated in additional victories in San Jose, Broward County, FL and Detroit. Our current campaigns are going on in Phoenix, Kansas City, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as well as a statewide minimum wage campaign in Florida (headed to the ballot in November 2004) and New Jersey.

In 1998 we established the Living Wage Resource Center to track the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to living wage organizers nationwide.

In November of 2003, ACORN hosted our third National Living Wage Training Conference which drew 100 people from 44 different living wage campaigns across the country to learn from each other about elements of a living wage campaign such as building local coalitions, doing research, working with city council, developing message and responding to the opposition, preparing for living wage implementation fights, and using living wage campaigns to build community and labor membership and power.

We encourage campaign organizers to contact Jen Kern at ACORN's Living Wage Resource Center at for more materials, to discuss specific campaign strategy, and to get referrals to experienced living wage organizers who have been or are currently involved in living wage campaigns in cities all over the country.

Latest Victories

Sonoma CA - July 2004 - The City of Sonoma passed an ordinance in July mandating covered employers to pay a wage of $11.70 with health benefits or $13.20 without health benefits, indexed annually to the consumer price index (7/04). The ordinance covers the City of Sonoma, companies with a city service contract worth at least $10,000, non-profits with city contracts of at least $75,000, and companies receiving loans or economic assistance worth $100,000 or more. Covered employers must also provide 12 compensated days off, as well as 10 uncompensated. Small businesses are exempt from the law.

Durham County NC - June 2004 - The Durham County Baord of COmmissioners passed a living wage ordinance in June, setting the County's living wage at 7.5% above the federal poverty level for a family of four, currently $9.74 (7/04). It applies to all employees of the County as well as those working on County service contracts, including contracts for temporary services (Durham CAN - Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods).

NOW AVAILABLE:

The 2003 updated version of the comprehensive 225-page guide for organizing living wage campaigns: Living Wage Campaigns: An Activist's Guide to Building the Movement for Economic Justice (by David Reynolds of Wayne State University Labor Studies Center with the ACORN Living Wage Resource Center). This nitty gritty guide includes profiles of successful campaigns, chapters on how to build a coalition, conduct research, respond to the opposition, draft an ordinance, plan a larger electoral strategy, a review of the available research on the impact of living wage laws, an appendix of helpful living wage resources and much more.

To order the guide, send a check or money order for $15 (payable to ACORN) to Denise Johnson at ACORN: 739 8th St. SE; Washington, DC 20003. Substantial portions of this guide are available online in PDF format at www.laborstudies.wayne.edu.