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LeoMarr posted:Minimum wage as an institution should benefit only those between 17 - 19 to fund a growing adults weekends and a college or young adults life before their career start. The higher minimum wage becomes the more competition you have from working aged people (20 - 40).
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Nov 5, 2015 03:10
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Jonny Nox posted:http://www.russellsage.org/research/chartbook/real-purchasing-power-minimum-wage-year Is this, in your opinion, a good website to cite facts about union wages from?
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Nov 5, 2015 03:15
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Helsing posted:Imagine how much stronger the middle class would be today if Lincoln hadn't emancipated the slaves. Not just the middle class, this is actually a perfect example of unintended consequences. Millions of healthy productive people that would proudly pick a bale of cotton or sugarcane have now been completely priced out of the labor market by out of touch liberal demands that they be payed more than two bowls of gruel per day. Sure, it wasn't much but they were gaining invaluable work experience and connections and instead they were thrown into a life of crime while simultaneous making everything from food to clothing much more expensive for the struggling middle class. And why does big government get to determine how much the sweat of your brow is worth? If those people were worth more than gruel then someone would be paying them that already.
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Nov 5, 2015 03:20
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LeoMarr posted:Cite an example of national wage increase stopping the middle class from declining Who said that's the point of the minimum wage? We know that the middle class are bougie fucks who are first in line for the guillotine, who cares about them?
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Nov 5, 2015 16:13
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Not sure why anyone is responding to LeoMarr. He's either a troll or a known racist idiot who reposts the same thing over and over again w.r.t. minimum wage and will not actually engage in discussion. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3717975&perpage=40#post444914652 What major labor unions are even left in America that would be directly impacted by min wage laws increasing? I guess I'm rather ignorant of what jobs have starting salaries at minimum wage, outside of the standard service sector jobs http://smallbusiness.chron.com/list-minimum-wage-jobs-2571.html
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Nov 5, 2015 17:43
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zeroprime posted:What major labor unions are even left in America that would be directly impacted by min wage laws increasing? I guess I'm rather ignorant of what jobs have starting salaries at minimum wage, outside of the standard service sector jobs http://smallbusiness.chron.com/list-minimum-wage-jobs-2571.html Any large minimum wage hike is going to affect more than just current minimum wage workers. A bump in minimum wage to $15 will directly affect everyone who makes $14.99/hour or less, which is a much larger group of people than those sitting at exactly the minimum wage.
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Nov 5, 2015 18:35
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Oh yes, absolutely, I'm just not clear on how large a group that is and what the majority of the professions are that would be effected. Are these going to be fields with an existing strong Union presence or is it going to be more of a knock-on effect for most large unions?
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Nov 5, 2015 18:39
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MeLKoR posted:If you could just cut working hours and demand your workers work harder whenever you please why didn't you do that before? The goodness of your heart? Of course, if they're serving people that benefit from the minimum wage increase, then they'll be able to raise prices, but that isn't always the case.
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Nov 5, 2015 19:45
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LeoMarr posted:you have 10 employees all being paid $10 an hour. Minimum wage increases to $15 an hour. Please explain to me how you make up for a 30% increase in wage for 10 people without cutting costs or increasing your profit margin by making your goods/services higher priced. More people can afford to buy whatever it is you're selling. Maybe the reason your margins are so tight is that no one has the money to spend on you.
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Nov 6, 2015 20:33
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there are lots of articles like this one. This is the impact of a 41% increase in pay for Walmart workers: http://www.attn.com/stories/1786/how-much-prices-walmart-rise-if-they-paid-better-wage quote:- According to researchers Ken Jacobs, Dave Graham-Squire, and Stephanie Luce, 41.4 percent of a pay increase to $12 an hour would go to workers in families with total incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The hilarious thing about it is that the biggest hit Walmart took after raising salaries is in stock, where it definitely took a huge blow because investors are saying "what the gently caress are you doing paying people living wages, capitalism can't afford that!" Now to answer the thread question: I work with labor unions and worker rights campaigns. The way I see it, at least the labor unions that I work with are the most involved in these minimum wage campaigns, and most of these campaigns are financed by labor unions and groups of people that work for anti-union corporations (i.e. walmart workers). nerdz fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 21:47
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I think it would be better to tax companies directly and give the money to individuals based on need. This would help the people regardless of whether they are employed or not, instead of just helping the employed ones, potentially at the formers' expense. A homeless man who can't convince walmart he's worth $9/hour isn't going to convince them he's worth $15/hour either. I can presume most people here agree that everyone should have the basic necessities provided to them government services. It doesn't really seem like the end of the world to me for a company to pay someone less than a living wage if the government pays the difference. If walmart wants to pay half the cost of that for some people, is that really so bad? If walmart weren't there, the government would have to foot the whole bill instead. The ethical question in setting a minimum wage then becomes "in which situations is it good for our society for there to be incentives to do work X for pay Y?" This is a lot more nebulous and harder to answer, for me it depends on the nature of the work just as much as it does the pay received. Obviously we don't live in a society where the former is true, but I'd think it'd be better to fix that than the raise the minimum wage as if that truly solves anything. Obviously I'm not talking about political expediency here, nor am I interested in that, but that's my thought. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 22:00
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I can presume most people here agree that everyone should have the basic necessities provided to them government services. It doesn't really seem like the end of the world to me for a company to pay someone less than a living wage if the government pays the difference - if walmart wasn't there, the government would have to foot the whole bill instead. If walmart wants to pay half the cost of that for some people, is that really so bad? The ethical question in setting a minimum wage then becomes "in which situations is it good for our society for there to be incentives to do work X for pay Y". This is a lot more nebulous and harder to answer, for me it depends on the nature of the work just as much as it does the pay received. This is the hosed up part, Walmart gets paid twice from the government here. First, since it does not pay a living wage, people that work there depend on welfare to survive. Also they only can afford to buy their stuff on Walmart, so not only the government is paying walmart workers (when walmart should pay them enough to not need welfare), most of that goverment welfare money goes back to walmart, in an indentured servitude kind of way. Now couple that with their wizard accountants that reduce their tax burden as much as possible. I already put that link showing that pay increases wouldn't even make a dent on walmart or the consumers. The Walton family is the richest family in the world (which is a pretty interesting way of evading the top position of richest person in the world, where they would be uncontested with almost 3 times more money than bill gates). They set the tone for wages countrywide due to their enormous amount of workers. Surely they can pay their workers better, and the workers have the right to fight for it. If you're not on welfare you don't know the loss of dignity and the feeling of "I messed up" that people have when depending on it. No one that works for a billionaire company should have to go through that.
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Nov 6, 2015 22:20
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That doesn't really address the heart of it though - those people still don't get a living wage if walmart suddenly disappears. If there were a true safety net such that working was an option, not a requirement for survival, wouldn't it be strictly better for walmart to exist and pay (let's say) half the bill? The point isn't that walmart can't afford it, it's that walmart is tangential here and we should address the problem directly. When I say "the government should provide healthcare for its citizens", I'm explicitly not saying "the government should force employers to pay for their employees healthcare", because it shouldn't involve the employers in the first place. I don't think it makes sense to have employers to pay for healthcare directly when the government would do it better, and I feel the same way about food and housing and every other necessity. You included a lot of emotional appeals about how walmart treats their employees like poo poo even when they could afford not to. You're right factually, but I think attacking them for it is attacking the symptom, not the root of the problem. Fixing the lopsided nature of labor negotiations addresses your points and more, it'd be much less of a bandaid than mere minimum wage. A person who can unconditionally feed his family without doing any work also wishes to work for walmart for $8/hour? Good for him - he probably doesn't feel degraded because he can leave at any time without his family ending up starving and on the streets. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 22:33
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:That doesn't really address the heart of it though - those people still don't get a living wage if walmart suddenly disappears. If there were a true safety net such that working was an option, not a requirement for survival, wouldn't it be strictly better for walmart to exist and pay (let's say) half the bill? The point isn't that walmart can't afford it, it's that walmart is tangential here and we should address the problem directly. When I say "the government should provide healthcare for its citizens", I'm explicitly not saying "the government should force employers to pay for their employees healthcare", because it shouldn't involve the employers in the first place. I don't think it makes sense to have employers to pay for healthcare directly when the government would do it better, and I feel the same way about food and housing and every other necessity. A GMI should exist and any work done for pay should be extra, not-instead of.
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Nov 6, 2015 22:36
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:That doesn't really address the heart of it though - those people still don't get a living wage if walmart suddenly disappears. If there were a true safety net such that working was an option, not a requirement for survival, wouldn't it be strictly better for walmart to exist and pay (let's say) half the bill? The point isn't that walmart can't afford it, it's that walmart is tangential here and we should address the problem directly. When I say "the government should provide healthcare for its citizens", I'm explicitly not saying "the government should force employers to pay for their employees healthcare", because it shouldn't involve the employers in the first place. I don't think it makes sense to have employers to pay for healthcare directly when the government would do it better, and I feel the same way about food and housing and every other necessity. on the other hand, i prefer to work within the confines of reality, so a GMI and government funded healthcare for all isn't really all that relevant when discussing raising minimum wage in america
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Nov 6, 2015 22:39
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Literally The Worst posted:on the other hand, i prefer to work within the confines of reality, so a GMI and government funded healthcare for all isn't really all that relevant when discussing raising minimum wage in america Powercrazy posted:A GMI should exist and any work done for pay should be extra, not-instead of. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 22:40
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Unlike discussions of ethics, discussions of political expediency aren't really of any interest to me so go ahead and have them but I won't engage. expediency nothing, you're basically busting into a thread about space travel going YEAH WELL WE SHOULD ALL BE ABLE TO GO TO MARS ON OUR PERSONAL JETPACKS it'd be fantastic and should happen, i agree, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the struggle to pay people a minimum wage that they can live on as it currently exists in america in the year 2015 and this "well i wont engage because you insist on talking about what IS and not what should be in a world that isn't poo poo" stuff is dumb
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Nov 6, 2015 22:45
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Apologies for the long post. But I think questions of policy have to be looked examined within the present historical context. It's fine to think about idealized system but at the end of the day you need to also look at how - historically speaking - the system was reformed in the past. The development of the 20th century welfare / regulatory state, what scholars sometimes have referred to as "embedded liberalism" in North America and as "social democracy" in Europe, came about in direct response to the growth of the labour movement, the need to provide a bulwark against communism, and the particular historical experiences of the Second World War. So it's great to talk about how there are more efficient ways to redistribute income that don't involve something as cumbersome as an adversarial labour movement that works in direct conflict to the desires of management. The problem is that there's no reason to think this ideal system would be implemented without pressure from labour. If you can think of some other political constituency with the power and motivation to implement your ideas then that's great, but that really is what the main debate has to be about: how do reforms actually get enacted? Historically speaking - and I see no reason to believe it would be different in the future - a strong labour movement has been an integral part of how working people get a higher share of national income, as well as the creation of stuff like publicly funded social insurance, public healthcare, opposition to segregation, and higher taxes on the wealthy. For all their flaws unions have proven basically irreplaceable in North America from a leftist perspective. I bring this up because ultimately the question then becomes, how should labour mobilize people who currently aren't in unions? How should a labour movement (notice this may not be the same thing as the contemporary union movement) try to inspire loyalty from workers? How can labour be a political force in the era of high-turnover jobs and internships? One possible answer, one worth exploring I think, is that rather than targeting workplaces a reinvigorated workers movement might choose to target state regulation of wages. Whether or not this can be done is an open question but its an option worth exploring, especially since pressure to move in this direction already exists. So while the minimum wage may not be the perfect policy it has certain strategic advantages in the current context. A workers movement organizing itself around a set of demands that include a living minimum wage might turn out to be a good way to get us closer to the kinds of technocratic solutions that Jeffrey of YOSPOS is suggesting, such as government provided employee benefits. If there isn't some kind of pressure from labour, however, that won't happen. And for labour to exert pressure it needs demands that can speak directly to the needs and desires of working people, and in the current climate it just might be the case that a higher minimum wage would be a good demand to make.
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Nov 6, 2015 22:45
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Unlike discussions of ethics, discussions of political expediency aren't really of any interest to me so go ahead and have them but I won't engage. From an ethical perspective, GMI is the clear winner in my eyes.
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Nov 6, 2015 23:32
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Unlike discussions of ethics, discussions of political expediency aren't really of any interest to me so go ahead and have them but I won't engage. From an ethical perspective, GMI is the clear winner in my eyes. Consider, however, that directly receiving benefits has been correlated with worse mental health- lower self-esteem, etc. and the extent to which this is due to the demeaning nature of how American welfare is distributed versus feelings of worthlessness and inability from not doing anything "productive" is not known. From that perspective, it may be more worthwhile to use minimum wages than GMI/BI, ethically. And of course, the most ethical approach would be to produce the essentials of life in such abundance nobody need pay for them, and money as exchange mostly used for nonessentials and luxuries.
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Nov 7, 2015 01:15
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Fight for 15 is basically an SEIU campaign. Half their signs read "$15 and a Union." SEIU organizes many of their actions. So labor is pushing for a minimum wage increase. Phone posting so I'm sorry if I missed that this was already posted. I'll get sources if people need. Edit: I see nerdz has already touched on labor pushing for a higher minimum wage. Atrocious Joe fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 01:22
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:More people can afford to buy whatever it is you're selling. Maybe the reason your margins are so tight is that no one has the money to spend on you. that, my dude, is speculation of the highest order and ranks up there with staring at chicken bones for next months forecast
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Nov 7, 2015 02:01
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I started an independent, non-union run, and very successful minimum wage campaign in my home town. It was a voter initiative, and we were going to make it. At first, the unions were very helpful, in a selective way. Then, when our campaign started going crazy and making the central labor councils up and down the state looking like assholes for proposing a lower 12.50 wage. Then they started dicking with our campaign - we had to get it on the November ballot, which gave us six weeks to collect the signatures instead of 6 months. Then they hired away all of my staff and made them cease campaign activities, and hollowed out my campaign, which is now owned by them and shut down. I will never work with a union again unless I get more protections, and I shut down two workplace unionization efforts in my town in response because they are loving corrupt bastards, and they wouldn't improve things for my guys if they ran our shop. Theyre in a struggle to be the workers champions, and the fight for 15 socialist folks and independents are threatening that. They also introduce an insane paranoid element wherever their dudes are put. They also didn't jive with jews or brown skinned people, but this is the UFCW, which is basically a corrupt nest of white good old boys. I went into this licking the rear end in a top hat of any union member or official, thinking that unions were the great savior. Now, I detest them as they currently are. They are obstacles to worker improvement, too easily factioned against each other, and within their own political crap. As soon as people from Socialism Now! Or whatever that organization is started flying socialists over from new york to meet with us, the union freaked out. That probably didn't help things. Martin Random fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 02:17
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JeffersonClay posted:Unions should in theory support minimum wage increases because they limit the amount that scabs can undercut the union wage. The members that are making a lot are the ones that militated against a higher minimum wage. These folks worked their way up to their pay grade, and they'll be damned if they waited 9 years to earn a living wage for some young worker to get it out of the gate. Edit: Sorry, I'm a little bitter. I raised a network of over 200 volunteers in three weeks in an anti-union stronghold, and after I threw my entire political infrastructure behind them and gave them the keys to the city, they loving shut the thing down. I'm pretty pissed.
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Nov 7, 2015 02:25
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Martin Random posted:The members that are making a lot are the ones that militated against a higher minimum wage. These folks worked their way up to their pay grade, and they'll be damned if they waited 9 years to earn a living wage for some young worker to get it out of the gate. Dude, that sucks balls. TO be fair I don't work with unions myself, I work with worker collectives (which is a formal way to say I work with a poverty relief program)
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Nov 7, 2015 03:14
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Having been in a strike situation that wasn't supported by the larger union our local was part of I can sympathize with people who don't like organized labour. Unions, or at least their leadership, are often a pretty big impediment.
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Nov 7, 2015 03:44
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Helsing posted:Having been in a strike situation that wasn't supported by the larger union our local was part of I can sympathize with people who don't like organized labour. Unions, or at least their leadership, are often a pretty big impediment. Currently doing my undergraduate thesis on Unions and Social Movement Organizations. There's certainly a reason as to why more unionized workers are less helpful unless they're in more 'radical' unions. The most help I've gotten is from the CWA chapter in the local area.
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Nov 7, 2015 04:13
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