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Tides Foundation's Bridging the Economic Divide (BED) Initiative is focused on a fundamental American value: everyone deserves fair pay for a fair day’s work, and working families should not live in poverty. Over the past 30 years, workers' living standards have declined in all ways – lower pay, longer work hours, less health care, no pensions, and more insecurity. The state of the federal minimum wage demonstrates this struggle—it has not budged from $5.15 an hour in more than eight years. That equals $10,712 a year for full-time work, well below the poverty rate for a family.
Several other stark political, social, and economic factors have played a role: growth of the temporary work force; decline of unions; globalization and off shoring; and “Wal-Mart-ization” of the retail industry. State and local budget crises and federal devolution policies are also detrimental to both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. States are recording the highest fiscal shortfalls since World War II, due to federal tax cuts that benefit corporations and the wealthy, restrictions on state sales taxes, and shifting of costs from Medicare to Medicaid. The hardest hit states are the poorest ones, many of which are located in the South, such as Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
The BED Initiative started in 2000 as a donor collaborative to address this growing chasm between the poor and the wealthy in this country. Since then, the Initiative has:
