The Real Faces of the Minimum Wage by Richard Eskow

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/22-2


Workers in New York last year rallied for fair wages in Queens. (Photos by Terence M. Cullen / The Queens Courier)

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The Facts

Minimum wage workers are adults.

Nearly 80 percent of the workers who would be directly affected by a minimum wage increase are adults, as seen in an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center. When you include those who would be indirectly affected that figure becomes more than 92 percent.

Less than 16 percent of workers who would be affected by President Obama’s minimum-wage proposal are teenagers.

Minimum wage workers are parents.

Many of those workers are parents. More than seven million children — nearly one out of every 10 kids in the United States — have parents whose income would go up under a new minimum wage. When you count the parents whose wages would be indirectly affected, that rises to more than 11 million (or roughly one in six) children whose households would benefit from the increase.

[Coyotl]

1. We need a Minimum Wage Union NOW!

[xchrom]

3. i've wondered what could have happened if other unions had joined in the fast food workers strike.

it seems to me an opportunity was missed -- multiplying bodies, increasing media awareness, spreading the union message with their infrastructures, etc.

[Coyotl]

4. One of the weaknesses of unions is organizational structure

which are set up in correlation with contractual relationships, a very fractured system relative to their broader principles and broadest interests of workers they represent. Where is the whole of this represented? AFL-CIO comes closest to some effort at broad organizing and historically that was an important step in unions gaining influence. There is a lesson in that. An over-arching union representing EVERYONE working for low wages now or before is needed to negotiate not with employers but with the masters of their pay scale, Congress and state legislatures. And to conduct ballot measures where available. Imagine a Low Wage Workers Union on strike. All the 1%'ers would starve to death and their lawns would turn to wild jungles. In just a few days, there would be no food in stores or restaurants. OMG, what if the rich had to care for their own children?

[LiberalEsto]

2. And don't forget those who make less than minimum wage - tipped workers

The $2.31 per hour minimum wage for waitpersons and other tipped workers hasn't changed in more than 20 years. It is ridiculous,

One of my daughters is a waitress. She only earns a pittance with the $2.31 hourly wage, and in this economy people are eating out less and tipping less. She will work a full shift and end up with maybe $30 in tips if she's lucky. Other jobs are impossible to find. She owes more than $20,000 in student loans, which we're stuck paying because 1) she has no money and 2) we consigned them.

Our friends are astonished to hear that waitpersons make so little. I was, too.

It's way past time to give these folks a raise, at least to $7 an hour. Better yet, require them to be paid the prevailing minimum wage.