Long ago, someone explained the difference between white collar and blue collar workers. If you take your shower before going to work, you’re a white collar worker. If you take your shower after you get home from work, you’re a blue collar worker.

In cooperation with the city of Louisville, Mississippi, Winston Plywood and Veneer opened a new sawmill in 2017, three years after an F4 tornado leveled the existing sawmill that had been in operation since the 1960s and only a month after Winston Plywood had purchased it.

The tornado killed 10, injured 80 and left the sawmill, long the lifeblood of the town, in ruins.

The new sawmill is heavily-automated with the most advanced technology in the industry. But it’s still a sawmill and the majority of its 400 employees still take their showers after work.

“It’s hard work,” said three-term mayor Will Hall, who was born and raised in Louisville. “It’s been that way forever around here. We have a lot more than the sawmill, but it’s still sawmill country. The whole region is.”

This week, Winston Plywood, through its investors, a Connecticut-based equity firm, announced a new wage structure. Normally, that would be big news in Louisville and Winston County, but go largely unnoticed elsewhere.

But what is happening in Louisville has broader implications, likely the kind that our ultra-conservative state leaders would just as soon ignore. Let a company expand by adding 30 or 40 jobs, and Gov. Tate Reeves shouts it from the social media rooftop, hailing it as proof of Mississippi’s economic development success.

But there was nary a peep from Jackson when Winston Plywood announced it would do something that may change stubbornly-held beliefs about wages.

On Monday, the company announced the rollout of a new wage structure, including a minimum wage of $15.25 per hour and increases for its skilled workers, bringing the average salary to $20 per hour.

This comes just 18 months after the company raised its starting pay to $13 per hour in July 2020. That’s a 40-percent increase in starting pay in 18 months, almost double the federal minimum wage at a company that relies heavily on unskilled labor. It is still a sawmill, after all.

What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy. Besides, we are told, Mississippi’s low cost of living makes a raise in the minimum wage unnecessary.

Yet a recent study provided to Congress on hearing about raising the federal minimum wage showed half of Mississippians are ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) and that a minimum wage that would cover essential costs of living would need to be $10.94 per hour for a single person and $14 per hour for two-income families with two children.

That a sawmill in a rural Mississippi town would go far beyond that is startling — and definitely something to keep an eye on.

The mayor of Louisville knows one thing: Winston Plywood executives didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become a nonprofit enterprise.

“The one thing that doesn’t change is that they want to make profits,” Hill noted. “Not to get too far into theory, but what’s happening here, I think, is basic economics. For a lot of years, there were more workers than jobs. Now, I think that’s changed. These are smart people. They realize there’s a competitive market for workers. They want to hire and retain the best workers they can find. I think that’s what they’re doing here. I think what we’re seeing is that it’s the workers who have the leverage now. It’s been the other way for a long time, and now we’re seeing a shift. Everything is cyclical, so I don’t know how long it will last. But I think what (Winston Plywood) is doing is significant.”

The repercussions are already being felt. Sales tax revenue for the city increased by 7 percent in 2020, even in a pandemic year. Hill said Winston County and Louisville, which was staggered by the 2014 tornado, is gaining population. In fact, one of the biggest challenges the area faces is a demand for housing, something that seemed almost unimaginable seven years ago. The demand is for middle income and upscale housing, Hill said.

Hill said the infusion created by the increase in wages at the sawmill will undoubtedly flow back into the local economy to shops and grocery stores and restaurants. He said he expects wages to increase throughout the area as business picks up and with it, the demand for workers.

Perhaps just as important is that those hard-working sawmill workers may find life a little easier and the stresses that lead to poverty and crime and all other sorts of societal ills may be relieved a bit.

Our state political leaders say raising wages in a meaningful way can’t be done.

A sawmill in a small Mississippi town says it can.

I know who I’ll be rooting for: the folks who take their showers after work.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].