Dear Editor:

Mary’s Musings, published May 14, entirely missed the point on employers that pay poverty wages. Workers, including tipped employees who give an employer and honest day's work, have earned and deserve a wage that they can live on. It’s a matter of fairness.

The greater majority of the employers who pay poverty wages are large corporations such as the operators of these big box stores. Many of these large corporations also enjoy significant tax benefits and exemptions because they promised jobs. These are the same corporations that have displaced many small and local retailers and producers.

On the other hand, many owners of small businesses run them like a family. They know that, aside from basic work skills, the value of loyalty, trust and continuity are worth the premium wage that they typically pay.

Here is another fact; out of the 125,000 workers in Maine who earn poverty wages, 25,000 are single mothers and 20,000 are older folks who do not have enough to retire on. The minimum wage in Maine is $7.50 per hour, which if you worked full time would be $15,300 a year. Expecting a worker to live on that is unrealistic and cruel.

It is a bedrock American value that if your work hard and play by the rules, you will be able to live the American dream. Yet we have single mothers unable to afford basic housing, seniors working well after they've earned a more comfortable retirement, and wage earners trapped in a cycle of hand to mouth living without the possibility to climb out poverty that the current minimum wage laws perpetuates. We expect these workers to play by the rules, yet these same rules are callously unfair.

It is time that we change this and give wage earners, including those who rely on tips for their income, a fair wage that they work so hard for and deserve.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay