The southeast is not a great place to be a worker, but it's particularly bad in the Tarheel state, according to a recent analysis.
Oxfam is a left-leaning global organization focused on fighting inequality. Its analysis of workers’ rights in the U.S. ranked North Carolina dead last — behind 49 other states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The ranking has received considerably less attention from state officials than CNBC's award of the "Top State for Business" title to North Carolina, which was celebrated by top Democratic and Republican leaders. CNBC's report noted Oxfam's rankings, and also concluded by its own analysis that North Carolina is "not terribly friendly to workers."
Patricia Stottlemyer is Oxfam’s Policy Rights Lead for Labor, and said North Carolina’s biggest problem is minimum wage: the state still follows the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which hasn’t been changed since 2009. But that’s just one of many issues, she said.
"North Carolina fails to have adequate laws on the books, including no guarantees of paid family leave or paid sick leave, no protections in state law against sexual harassment at work, no protections for outdoor workers who are exposed to extreme heat,” she said, adding that North Carolina did little to protect and support workers seeing to organize and collectively bargain, either.
Stottlemyer said states that do well on the labor index also have higher GDP and lower rates of infant mortality, food insecurity, and poverty.
She suggested North Carolina lawmakers should prioritize a higher minimum wage.
"That's sort of the point of public policy, right? It's to ensure that the floor is raised adequately for everyone, and that we don't need to leave it up to individual employers to decide," she said.
North Carolina is one of eight states that uses the federal minimum wage. The state also has a preemption law, which means cities and towns can’t set their own local minimum wage.
"So even if a town wanted to set a higher minimum wage in North Carolina, they couldn't on worker protections," Sottlemyer explained. "North Carolina has 1.5 million workers making less than $17 an hour. So raising the minimum wage would just be an immediate, an immediate help to these families who are struggling to make ends meet on woefully inadequate minimum wages."
Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to raise the minimum wage in North Carolina, but no such legislation has passed both chambers. This year, two bills were filed to raise minimum wage: neither made it out of committee.
