Poverty in New England

New England is one of the nation’s wealthiest regions, a center of education, commerce, and culture. But it is also a region that has witnessed the largest expansion in the nation between its richest and its poorest citizen’s. New England has an hourglass economy, with many on the top and bottom and with the middle class being squeezed out. This was amply illustrated by a report issued by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire in 2007, the income disparity in New England between rich and poor is real and growing.

The bottom of New England’s hourglass economy is its working poor. These are the people who get up everyday work hard, play by the rules and still find that they and their families are falling further and further behind. The cost of living in New England continues to get more expensive. Three fourths of low wage workers spend more than a third of their income on housing – they would need to make an hourly wage of more than $24 to pay fair market rent on a two-bedroom apartment. Additionally, most of these workers will have to pay up to $140 a month to buy the health insurance mandated by Massachusetts’s health insurance laws.

In the past industrial and manufacturing jobs provided many working families with a pathway into the middle class. These jobs have been replaced by low paying service sector jobs. As service industries become the backbone of the economy in the region, we need to find ways to make sure that these jobs are good jobs that can sustain families. 12 of the 15 largest occupations in Massachusetts pay wages below $15 per hour. Together these occupations make up more than 25% of Massachusetts total employment. Many of these jobs offer no room for growth in terms of wages or benefits.

Young people are sustaining much of the brunt of this. We know that poverty among young people and teenagers in Boston is increasing. We also know that violent crime among teenagers in Boston is increasing. We can turn this around by by making sure that service industry jobs make decent wages and provide opportunity.

We can create a New England that works for everyone. We can make a New England that is secure for everyone. By standing up for the security officers who protect Boston and Cambridge, we are standing up for all workers across the region.

Why are security officers uniting?

Stand Up for Security!
Boston’s security officers are often the first-line of a defense in a dangerous world. Yet, they receive little training, are paid low wages—often little more than $10 an hour in one of the most expensive cities in the nation—and are not allowed important benefits such as vacation days and sick time. As a result, turnover is high, which weakens our cities neighborhoods and creates gaps in the security of our major buildings.

We can change the situation … and we will! Stand Up for Security! When Boston’s security officers unite, they will have a historic opportunity to achieve a better quality of life, to infuse resources into Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, and to strengthen security in the city’s most vulnerable buildings.

Safer Buildings

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made it more apparent than ever how vulnerable properties in our U.S. cities can be to terrorist threats and other life threatening emergencies. But many security officers in buildings in the Boston and Cambridge areas receive inadequate training, and many are unfamiliar with the properties they are asked to protect.

By joining together to form a union with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), security officers will have a real opportunity to raise standards industrywide by increasing the level of training and decreasing skyrocketing turnover rates.

Five years after the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, it is time to improve security in our buildings by creating a better trained and better paid professional workforce.

Respect

Security officers are asked to protect us and the multimillion-dollar buildings where we work and study. Yet many officers don’t receive a sustainable wage and their employers and building owners don’t treat them as professionals, by refusing to provide adequate training or a career path out of entry-level positions.

Better Neighborhoods

Imagine what would happen to some of Boston’s struggling neighborhoods—such as Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan—if the sizeable population of security officers who live there could spend more time and money in those communities. Fathers and mothers would have more time to spend with their children. They would also have more opportunity to become leaders in these neighborhoods, joining community groups and organizations that bring much-needed stability to their streets. Additionally, better wages for Boston’s security officers means more money being infused in small businesses and on homes in places such as Fields Corner, Dudley Street, and Codman Square.

Security officers’ effort to transform their jobs has received overwhelming support from Boston’s mayor, Tom Menino, and Cambridge’s mayor, Ken Reeves. The city councils in both cities have stood up to support security officers, as have several state representatives and senators, including Senator Jarrett Barrios, who chairs the Massachusetts Senate’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee. They all recognize how important this effort is to creating a stronger, safer greater Boston.

Better Lives

Security officers are our neighbors—they live on the same streets and in the same buildings as you do. Most have families and homes, and work very hard to make ends meet. Many go to school part time and most have multiple jobs.

Yet, because they are paid so little (little more than $10 an hour, when the sustainable wage in Boston is approximately $21 an hour), and because the health insurance offered to them is so expensive, few are able to bring home more than a couple of hundred dollars a week. They cannot afford apartments or homes of their own, and some are forced to live in single-occupancy rooms in boarding houses around the city. They can’t spend time with their families or in their neighborhoods. They can’t afford decent health insurance. And they go to work every day to protect some of the city’s most expensive buildings.

“There is something wrong when the people who protect the most expensive real estate in the area can barely afford to make ends meet.”