Minimum Wage Earners Held Hostage
Minimum Wage Earners Held Hostage for Ten Years by Republican Senators28 Republican senators voted for an amendment to a bill that would raise the minimum wage, with language that would turn the issue back to state legislatures and effectively kill the concept of a federal minimum wage. Those who voted to kill the minimum wage included the GOP senators from Wyoming, Arizona and Idaho, as well as individual senators from Colorado and Utah.
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) justified his opposition to the clean minimum wage hike bill by stating, ÂWeÂre trying to make sure we donÂt put mom-and-pop businesses and their employees out of work. Yet a study by the Center for American Progress, says that higher minimum wages have been good for business.
Conservatives continue to maintain that higher minimum wages destroy jobs and injure the most vulnerable.
COMMENTS
Most business schools in the country teach their students that if their business is marginal either losing money or barely breaking even, then they should try to change what they are doing to make things better. We have seen fast food restaurants have customers pour their own drinks and swipe their own credit cards. We have seen robots in the automobile assembly plants. Supermarkets do not put prices on most items anymore. Most states have customers put gas in their cars. Most farms have equipment to save labor. Even in large business you have to go to the executive staff to find secretaries nowadays. Everyone up through middle management types up their own letters now. Automation answers the phone.
Most business schools also teach future business owners and executives to treat their employees fairly and with respect. Business schools teach everyone that if nothing can be done to improve a marginal business, then maybe the business should fail. Maybe some small businesses should fail so that the remaining ones may become stronger with potential increased sales from the closed ones. Maybe we do not need as many fast food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, cleaning businesses, landscapers, malls, and many other small businesses.
The pirates are the big business executives that hire or contract others to hire illegal workers and to reduce wages as low as minimum wage so that they can artificially inflate their salaries, bonuses, and corporate toys like corporate jetStockholdersders have seen none of this new found money. We have all heard about the meat packers who cut wages in half by bringing in illegals. The same thing happens when big business contracts to bring in cleaning crews, for example. The past crews usually earned an adequate wage and benefits and are fired and replaced by others for much less wages and much less in benefits.
The 28 senators are stalling the increase for the minimum wage not because of mom and pop businesses, but because of big businesses. All of them do not have any empathy for the minimum wage worker. None of them care that they are really behind federal poverty wage levels. None of them care that the people are much less likely to have any type of health care benefit or retirement plan. None of them call for decency to be fair to these people. Maybe a few more dollars each week will encourage them to obtain some training. Maybe a few dollars more will encourage them to commute a little further for a better paying job. Maybe they could save a little so they can move to a more prosperous area and obtain a better apying job.
Maybe the 28 republican senators are supporting illegal immigrants and the people that hire them instead of supporting American citizens. Maybe they are sucking up to illegal alien public relations groups instead of American citizen support groups.
Senator Webb said it best when he spoke on the Democratic response to President Bush's State of the Union speech recently. For detail please follow this link. "Webb made clear that there is a class war going on, and that the wrong side is winning it.
"When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did," Webb said. "Today, it's nearly 400 times."
OK, that's a standard sort of line from your standard progressive speech. But then came this arresting sentence: "In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day."
How many politicians out there raising campaign contributions from rich people are willing to use "boss," instead of a more respectful locution? And by talking about the time it takes someone to earn a buck, Webb makes it impossible for anyone to forget how vast the inequalities in our society have become.
Webb knows whom he is fighting for. "We're working," he said, "to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.""
Finally, I don't think the 28 senators want to become reelected again. Ten years is more than enough time to delay increasing the minimum wage.
posted by God Bless America - Bob @ 2:33 PM
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