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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
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Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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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