“So when corporate leaders talk about how the minimum wage won't pull people up from the poverty line, they're right: many companies that rely on minimum-wage workers, from McDonald's to Walmart, have already figured out how to treat their workers as commodities, and poverty is now built into the system because of that. In a longtime period of joblessness like the one we're living through, people will take whatever job they can get. But there is an intellectual dishonesty here too, as well as a craven contribution to the country's economic woes. Corporate leaders shouldn't have to be told by the government to pay their workers a living wage. They know that consumers will drive the recovery, but consumption by the rich doesn't do it. You need the middle and lower classes.”
—Denying Minimum-Wage Workers A Raise Is Craven and Grotesque
You'd Like To Be Paid A Living Wage?! STOP BEING A RADICAL BITCH.
Say you were a GOP Official in New Mexico & you’re listening to a 19 year old young woman testify in favor of raising the minimum wage.
What would you say?
Any of you correctly guess calling her a “radical bitch”? Anyone?
Because, as you can see, that is exactly what Executive Director of the Bernalillo County Republican Party in New Mexico, Steve Kush, called a 19 year old woman on Tuesday. The girl, a volunteer for labor advocacy group Working America was simply testifying in favor of raising the minimum wage before the county commission.
Apparently, simply advocating for a living wage makes you a RADICAL.
Oh, but it didn’t end there!
Apparently, you can’t advocate for a higher minimum wage for others if you are not making minimum wage yourself. Also, having a nice pair of boots automatically makes you well off. AND, she’s a girl, so Steve Kush just tunes out the words coming out of her mouth and focuses in on her looks.
Common decency to not ‘boo’ at someone speaking at a public forum? THAT’S NAZI TALK.
And finally, after numerous posts about being SO BORED and the public blowback that followed, Mr. Steve Kush issued an apology:
“[I] feel awful that I put my thumbs on the keypad of my smart phone.”
or, basically,
“My one regret is I said these things on a public forum. Next time, I call a woman a ‘radical bitch,’ I’ll make sure it’s not on the Internet.”
Penn State- Living Wage Calculator
livingwage.geog.psu.eduThere are more to the minds of Pennsylvania State students than violently rioting for pedo coaches. Calculate your living wage for your Area, here are some statistics on New York
Low-wage America is fighting for justice
socialistworker.org
HUNDREDS OF low-wage fast food and retail workers walked off the job and into the Chicago streets on April 24, only two weeks after fast food workers in New York City held another similar walkout and amid an ongoing national campaign against the retail giant Wal-Mart.
In Chicago, workers at more than 40 workplaces, including McDonald’s, Subway, Macy’s, Sally Beauty Supply, Victoria’s Secret and Whole Foods Market, organized rolling strikes that swept across the city from 5:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. This was the latest workplace action called by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC)—also known as Fight for 15 (its central demand is that Chicago’s minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour).
The organization of fast-food and retail workers took its campaign public last November with a series of banner drops and sit-ins aimed at upscale retailers in the Loop and Magnificent Mile.
The April 24 day of strikes and protests focused again on the demand for a $15 an hour minimum wage, but there were also calls for an end to discrimination and intimidation against workers for organizing.
Raising the minimum wage would almost double the income of many fast-food and retail workers in Chicago, where the current minimum is only $8.25. The Living Wage Calculator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website estimates that a wage of about $20 an hour is needed for Chicago’s working families to meet their needs.
Workers struck on April 24 at great personal risk because the minimum wage in Chicago is a poverty wage. “We can’t survive on $8.25!” workers chanted as they marched from store to store in the Loop, where an estimated $4 billion passes through the cash registers annually.
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg Sues to Keep New Yorkers' Wages Low
The world’s 20th richest man declared recently that a living wage bill passed (over his veto) by New York’s city council was the next best thing to Communist central planning. Michael Bloomberg, who’s also made news recently trying to ban large sodas, today took the next step in proving how serious he is about keeping wages low—I mean, keeping New York City a “business-friendly” climate.
Bloomberg is suing to prevent not just the living wage bill, but a companion “prevailing wage” bill that the City Council also passed over his veto, from going into effect. The living wage bill requires employers that get more than $1 million in taxpayer subsidies to pay their workers at least $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 an hour without them, and the prevailing wage bill would up wages to $20 an hour for certain building services workers in buildings that receive subsidies of over $1 million or where the city leases a significant amount of property.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
In the complaint filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg argued that the laws are overridden by state and federal laws. Because the state has its own minimum-wage law, for example, the city doesn’t have the authority to require employers to pay higher wages, the lawsuit said. Mr. Bloomberg also argued that the laws unlawfully limit mayoral powers.
Council spokeswoman Zoe Tobin said the council is confident that it acted within its authority under state law and the City Charter. “These laws were passed over the mayor’s veto with overwhelming support in the council and it is disappointing that the mayor has chosen to challenge these laws rather than enforce them,” she said.
In April, Mr. Bloomberg delivered an unusually sharp rebuke to the council as he vetoed one of the bills, lecturing its backers on “the way the free market works.”
Bloomberg would know how the free market works, after all—it apparently works by handing out millions of dollars of taxpayer money to big businesses so that they’ll stick around and continue to pay low wages. FreshDirect, as we reported, got nearly $129 million in city money to stay in town, despite paying its drivers and warehouse workers around $8 or $8.50 an hour. (FreshDirect managed to get exempted from the living wage law anyway, as Council speaker Christine Quinn maneuvered to make it more palatable to business.)
Of course, Bloomberg is dead wrong on the merits—the “economic growth” that he claims to be protecting would in fact be boosted if New Yorkers could actually, you know, afford to spend some money. $8 an hour won’t let them do that—nor, truly, will $10 an hour. A recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition recently noted that it would require 88 hours of work a week to afford a 2-bedroom apartment in New York working at minimum wage—the same minimum wage that Bloomberg thinks these workers, at massively tax-subsidized companies, should get.
Is $9 an hour too low for the minimum wage?
current.comIn his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour (up from $7.25). Republicans immediately began insisting it would hurt small businesses and derail economic improvement. But some people have had the opposite reaction: $9 an hour is not enough.
Many university organizations and anti-poverty groups argue that until we increase the minimum wage to a living wage, workers will still live well below the poverty line. What constitutes a “living wage” - i.e., the hourly salary necessary to pay for food, bills, housing, transportation, healthcare and other necessities without outside assistance - varies from place to place. MIT created a calculator where you can determine the living wage on your area. In Los Angeles, the living wage for a single adult would be $11.37 per hour; for a family of four, both parents should be earning $22.95 per hour. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, a single adult should earn $7.53 an hour, and parents of a family of four should each earn $17.68 an hour.
Last week, we asked you what you thought about increasing the minimum wage. But now we want to know if you think that’s good enough.
Is $9 an hour too low for the minimum wage?
