Ann Arbor Law Nudges Living Wage Upwards

At its May 16, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council recorded on its agenda of written communications a memo from its financial services staff that its living wage, as defined by city ordinance Chapter 23, Section 1:815, will be raised slightly in order to conform with the ordinance.

The new wage is set at $11.83/hour for those employers paying health insurance, and $13.19/hour for those employers not paying health insurance. That’s an increase from previous levels which have remained flat for a few years at $11.71 per hour for employers offering health insurance and $13.06 per hour for those who don’t offer health insurance.

The Ann Arbor city ordinance applies to the wages that must be paid by companies who have contracts with the city worth more than $10,000. Passed in 2001, the city’s living wage ordinance stipulated in that year that workers vendors who held contracts with the city had to pay their employees a minimum of $8.70/hour if the contractor provided employee health care and $10.20/hour if not.

The ordinance provides a mechanism for increasing the living wage based on federal poverty guidelines. Ann Arbor’s living wage is to be increased each year by “… a percentage equal to the percentage increase, if any, in the federal poverty guidelines as published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services …” This year, the guidelines showed a 1.0% increase, and the living wage has thus been increased as well. [.pdf of poverty guidelines]

[Previous Chronicle coverage on the living wage ordinance: "Living Wage: Insourcing City Temps"]