Sally Smyth is a student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. She has been involved with efforts to build a more fair, healthy, and sustainable food system for almost ten years, and she is currently conducting research on food retail jobs with UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), and the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

Demand Good, Sustainable Food Retail Jobs to Fight Food Deserts

by Sally Smyth

Sally Smyth

In his State of the Union Address this month, President Obama called for a much- needed increase to the federal minimum wage. Almost four million American workers are paid at or below the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour for their work, adding up to about $15,000 per year, per person for a full-time, 40 hour per week job. This doesn’t come close to covering the cost of living for a single person, let alone a family.