ENVISIONING A JUST WAGE ECONOMY

Submitted by Dan Graff on November 8, 2018 – 3:51pm

Taking Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as inspiration, in particular Pope John Paul II’s claim that “a just wage is the concrete means of verifying the justice of the whole socioeconomic system,” the Higgins Labor Program at the Institute for Social Concerns is confronting the question of increasing inequality by convening an interdisciplinary group of scholars and students drawn from the humanities, social sciences, business, and law. This Just Wage Working Group probes the foundational question: What makes any given wage just or unjust?

Our answer is a Just Wage Framework identifying seven criteria that collaborate to compose a just wage, as well as an online Just Wage Tool planned for release by spring 2019. A just wage, as we envision it, is more robust and relational than other wage conceptualizations, and we hope our Just Wage Framework and Tool will promote public and private-sector policies not only rooted in widely shared values but also conducive to more widely shared wealth.

Read the full column, from Nov. 5, 2018, at The Observer.