Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site tty3b.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ltuxa!tty3b!mjk From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage Message-ID: <451@tty3b.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Aug-84 17:16:43 EDT Article-I.D.: tty3b.451 Posted: Thu Aug 2 17:16:43 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 00:30:24 EDT References: <1665@inmet.UUCP> Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill Lines: 41 The point of the minimum wage is to reduce the cutthroat wage competition, which does not benefit ANY worker. I reject the idea that the conflict is between middle-class workers who are making a middle-class income and working-class people who are struggling to get by. Who is served if the wages of the middle-class are reduced to distribute a few more crumbs to working-class people? Hint: who sits above this whole conflict? One writer suggested that black teenagers would be better served if they could bid for jobs at $2.50/hour. Well, why not $2? why not $1.50? why not 25 cents a day? Jobs that don't pay a living wage aren't worth having. Do you realize what $3.55 an hour means? It means $142/week, $568/month, $6816/year. Before taxes (and,yes, they have them -- FICA, state and local). But that's too much, our free marketeers tell us. Instead, let's pay $2.50/hour ($100/week, $400/month, $4800/year). The unions that you like to rail against have also fought mightily for a jobs program that would provide jobs for the unemployed at living wages, not the slave wages the anti-minimum wage advocates would like to see. Many of the unions have also fought to organize those workers to gain real benefits. Don't forget that most people working at minimum wage do not get the paid vacations, health benefits, pension and other things that we all take for granted. One final point. This consumer vs. workers thing. Do you know any consumers? How many people, when you ask them "what do you do?" say "Oh, I'm a consumer." My point is that we're all BOTH. We work and we buy with what we make from working. These interests are not in conflict, either. There are always those who want to divide us: black teenagers vs. white union workers; white unionists vs. black unionists; consumers vs. workers. The point of the minimum wage and trade unions in general is that if we fall into that level of competition, we all lose. Even non-unionized workers, because they get the benefits that the unions win; management passes it along because they're afraid of spreading the union. Mike Kelly