Triangle living-wage group folds after losing funds for business certification work
Farming is highly skilled and hard work with thin profit margins, and the owners of Ten Mothers Farm in Cedar Grove say their goal is financially stable employees who want to stay on the job.
“We really want farming to be a viable profession, and having worked on other farms, we saw how a lot of people who wanted to be farmers felt like they couldn’t because of the wages just not keeping up with cost of living,” farm co-owner Vera Fabian said.
In 2022, Fabian and her husband, Gordon Jenkins, applied to become a certified living-wage business with Orange County Living Wage, a local nonprofit. It was a way to market their values and validate the cost of their community-supported agriculture memberships, Fabian said, “but it’s also held us accountable as a business from year to year.”
This is the last year that Orange County Living Wage will set an hourly pay for its certified businesses — $19.90 an hour in 2025 — because there’s no money to keep going past Dec. 31. The website, job listings and business directory will remain for another year.
They are proud of the successes over the past nine years, said director Debbie Everly and founder Susan Romaine.
“The dedication of our certified living wage employers, donors, advocates and volunteers has been inspiring, and it is their commitment that has made our mission a reality,” Everly said. “While we are saddened by this closure, we are grateful for the lasting change we have created as a community.”
Housing costs pushing up wages
OCLW’s living wage formula is based on the average federal fair-market rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Orange, Chatham, Durham and Alamance counties over a four-year period. It assumes that someone is spending only 30% of their income on housing.
However, housing costs have soared in the last few years, leaving more and more people struggling to afford housing. Without higher wages, many can’t afford to stay in their community and spend money on local goods and services, Romaine said.
Orange County’s living wage started at $12.75 in 2015, rising about 4% annually until this year, when it grew 6.3%. In 2025, it will rise nearly 13% to $19.90 an hour, because of the sharp increase in local rental rates.
“It’s just becoming increasingly hard for especially small business owners to absorb that much of a spike in living wages and still be sustainable in terms of their operations,” Romaine said.
Ten Mothers Farm is still planning next year’s budget, but it will be a stretch, Fabian said. A price increase is possible.
“It’s tough, because I’m very sympathetic with small business owners and how hard it can be to pay a living wage, but I feel it winds up working out, because our customers want to be part of a business that is paying a living wage,” Fabian said. “This is ideally how the world would work.”
Funding going to social services
Over time, OCLW certified 385 employers, promoting them with window decals and online and media campaigns. Almost 80% have recertified every two years at the new pay rate. Those who help pay for employee health insurance pay a slightly lower wage.
The nonprofit helped put $3.5 million into workers’ pockets.
The number of certified employers fell to 261 this year, as some businesses closed or relocated, while others struggled to keep up with rising wages, Romaine said. A few dropped out when OCLW added an application fee this year.
But they couldn’t counter a decline in government and philanthropic grants, she said. Orange County was a major supporter, giving them a maximum grant of $36,000 in June 2022 that paid most of the bills.
But post-pandemic needs funneled more taxpayer money into food, housing, mental health and substance abuse services, Romaine said. Virtual meetings also made it hard for the OCLW board to form connections that sustain nonprofits and attract new members.
The Durham Living Wage Project also has faded away since 2022, but The News & Observer’s efforts to learn why were unsuccessful.
That leaves Just Economics in Asheville as the state’s only longtime program, although executive director Vicki Meath said at least one new program is emerging in Forsyth County. Wake County has a living wage program, but it is tied to incentives for new and expanding businesses and targeted growth areas.
Just Economics is not seeing the same funding issues as OCLW, because it relies more on donations and private grants, Meath said, but its living-wage goals are on hold right now. The focus instead is on helping businesses recover from Helene and desperate people find housing. Evictions are growing among those who lost their jobs to the storm or were out of work for weeks, she said.
Looking to state for change
Romaine isn’t closing the book on OCLW yet, noting it might become part of a statewide coalition lobbying for legislative changes that benefit workers. The state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a good place to start, since it hasn’t changed since 2009, she said.
Oxfam, a nonprofit fighting poverty and injustice, ranked North Carolina last among the best U.S. states in which to work and next to last for working women in its 2024 report, citing the state’s low minimum wage, limited worker rights and lack of paid family leave.
North Carolina has ranked low for several years, “demonstrating a consistency at the state level in not passing new laws in support of low-wage workers and working families,” the report said.
Some OCLW-certified businesses have expressed support for a coalition that could also seek more affordable housing and child care, Romaine said.
“I could not be more proud of the work that (local nonprofits do), but the work has also made me realize we can’t keep relying on these nonprofits to keep filling in these gaps,” Romaine said. “We need to look at systemic change in our policies so that people who are working full-time jobs are not living in poverty.”
