Is that Somethin’s Happening Here, and It’s Pretty Clear to Everyone but Big
Business
Last week minimum wage or slightly better paid workers at
burger joints around Manhattan walked off the job. They wanted better pay and
predictable hours, probably to fit in a second job. This was no sudden,
spontaneous event. It came as the result of the SEIU organizing workers and
building coalitions with community anti-poverty groups. But people without the
protection of a union contract, walked. It’s hard to get union workers to
picket, so I have great respect for the stones it took for those workers as
well as Wal-Mart workers who walked, and who were mightily aided by UFCW and others.
Something clearly is happening with the American workforce.
Whether it is fatigue with the recession and the recognition that little can be
done to improve their economic situations or utter desperation, these workers
are speaking to the vast inequality between the very rich and the rest of us.
New Jersey is poised to raise the minimum wage. Gov. Chris
Christie probably will veto a bill which passed this afternoon. But he won’t have
his way. The Democratic-controlled legislature has enough votes to get it on
the ballot in 2013 and that is the same year Christie runs for re-election.
Does he really want that issue upsetting his rather fragile hold on a mostly
blue state? Who knows. He loses on minimum wage no matter what so why not get
it done with? Other than to be a mean bastard.
Business leaders piss and moan that the minimum wage will
place a burden on them, have got to quit the whining. If their businesses
are so shaky that a $2,000 increase per full-time employee per year is going to bust
them, then they already are on the road to bankruptcy court. Big retailers,
like the Wal-Marts and Targets, and burger slingers like McDonalds and Wendy’s
can afford this adjustment.
Another thing business has got to realize is that consumers drive
the economy. The working poor don’t save. Most of their incomes go right back into the
economy on food, clothing and shelter. Henry
Ford was just fine with a living wage because he wanted people to buy his cars.
So, wake the F up, business and get with the program because, guess what
assholes, your employees are already wide awake and ready for action.
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