This week, Living Wage Western Mass has been marking Living Wage Week to promote the idea that “a living wage is a human right” and all employees “should earn a wage that enables [them] to meet their basic needs including: decent housing; food; transportation; clothing; utilities; and medical care.”

The week also honors Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary from 1933 to 1945 under Franklin Roosevelt and a key architect of the New Deal, who was born April 10, 1880. It was under Perkins that the federal minimum wage was first established in 1933, and then re-established in 1938 after a conservative Supreme Court ruled the initial law unconstitutional in 1935.

Living Wage Western Mass is a coalition of individuals and organizations that works to create a community in which workers are paid at least a living wage. The organization certifies living wage employers and members make it a priority to patronize those businesses.

Formed originally as the Northampton Living Wage Coalition, the group persuaded the Northampton City Council to pass a Living Wage Resolution in 2009 that established a voluntary living wage campaign for Northampton, with a certification program, managed by the coalition, for employers who pay or aspire to pay at least a living wage to every employee.

Although these sorts of local initiatives are voluntary, a growing number of employers are signing on. Living Wage Western Mass cites a number of benefits for businesses that pay a living wage, including reduced turnover costs, increased worker morale and productivity, a greater ability to attract more qualified workers, and the fact that people who care about the living wage will be more likely to frequent businesses that are certified. They also note that employers benefit because workers with more money to spend will boost the local economy.

“What goes around comes around” is particularly apt as a description of local economics.

Many of these themes were highlighted in a February Amherst Bulletin article describing one local business that recently raised wages from $9 to $12 per hour. Keren and Nicholas Rhodes, owners of Glazed Doughnut Shop in downtown Amherst, explained their decision both in terms of fairness to their workers and also the greater productivity and employee accountability that higher wages bring.

The living wage is derived from a budget covering basic needs, including housing, food, clothes, health care, heat, hot water, lights and transportation, of a single person without children. It is adjusted yearly for inflation. Living Wage Western Mass calculates the current living wage rate at $13.18 per hour for Northampton and $12.17 for towns in western Massachusetts other than Northampton and Amherst. Although they don’t provide a specific rate for Amherst, it seems reasonable, given the cost of housing here, to apply the Northampton rate.

Advocacy for a living wage for all workers is particularly important given long term economic trends in this country. Wage inequality has been increasing since the early 1970s, with the share of income that goes to the bottom 90 percent of the population now at just 52 percent of the total, according to a 2014 report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. The federal minimum wage has dropped by a third in real value since its peak 1968. Even back then, a family of four supported by a full-time employee earning minimum wage would have had an annual income 1 percent below the poverty line. Since 1989, the averaged minimum wage has provided just 60 percent of the poverty level income for such a family.

The fight to ensure a living wage for all workers has made headlines recently, with the news this month that both California and New York will be raising their minimum wages to $15 per hour. Until now, much of the leadership has been at municipal level, with cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles providing some of the strongest and earliest responses to workers calls for fair wages.

Local efforts are critically important for changing policy on a larger scale. Massachusetts was the first state to establish a minimum wage in 1912, two decades before the federal minimum wage was established, and that state policy was driven by local labor organizing in communities like Lawrence and Lowell.

Frances Perkins would agree. Charles Hoffacker, board member of the Frances Perkins Center in Newcastle, Maine, and author of a recent essay, “Frances Perkins: Builder of a Gracious Society,” writes that Perkins “advised those who wished to promote the public good to start at the local level. Authority grows from engaging a small project close to home. On the basis of authority gained through such service, we may address state, national, or international problems later on.”

Making it possible for all workers in our community to earn a living wage is an urgent goal that will benefit from local efforts.

Jim Oldham is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5.