Stagnant wages, ballooning rental costs and the shrinking supply of
affordable housing are heaping an ever-growing burden on low-income
families. "Out of Reach," a
new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, found
minimum-wage workers can no longer afford an average one-bedroom
apartment in any state in America. Since 2009, the federal baseline wage
has remained stagnant, but rents have jumped 15.2 percent.
Nationally, a renter needs to make $15.50 per hour to afford a
one-bedroom unit and $19.35 for two bedrooms. In the South, where most
states' minimum wage is the federally mandated $7.25 an hour, that
lopsided equation is forcing difficult budget decisions. Many families
must share space with other renters in crowded homes, seek substandard,
below-market housing or turn to shelters. Some breadwinners take on
second jobs or cut back on other necessities like food, healthcare and
clothing to spend more than the recommended 30 percent of income on
housing. In West Virginia and Kentucky, for example, 70 percent of
residents considered extremely low-income (less than $20,357 a year) pay
more than half that income in rent. In Georgia, a minimum-wage worker
would need to work 87 hours per week – more than two full-time jobs – to
rent a two-bedroom home.
For low-income families, homeownership is just as elusive as affordable rentals. According to a recent analysis from RealtyTrac,
home price appreciation has outpaced wage growth by a 13-to-1 ratio
over the past two years. Smaller cities and rural areas grapple with
lack of access to capital. That's where organizations like North
Carolina-based Self Help Credit Union come in. "If your goal is to
create middle-class opportunities by owning a home, and you can't have a
down payment if you have no cash for a down payment, it becomes
self-fulfilling," says CEO Martin Eakes. "We can't really solve the
housing problem … if families on the bottom 40 percent or 50 percent
simply do not have enough income, even if they're working 50- and
60-hour jobs, to be able to survive."
from here
There you have it once again - the facts are out there - there is no way within the this system that everyone, whether families or singles, can afford a place to live.
Isn't it long past the time we should have ditched this system for socialism, a system which guarantees free housing for all, to all according to need, from all according to ability? Of course it's possible, we only have to get on with it, together.
Showing posts with label minimum wage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minimum wage. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Living Close To The Minimum Wage In US
Top 4 largest occupation sectors in the United States all in the low wage service sector paying $10 an hour or less: What does it mean living near the minimum wage?
There was a time when the top employment sectors in the US involved people making things and wages provided enough for a healthy standard of living. Now most Americans need to go into incredible levels of debt to purchase homes or even go to college. I always find it useful to look at the top employment sectors in our country because it gives us a good sense as to what jobs are dominating the market. Let us take a look at some of the top employment fields.
Low wage employment
It may be a surprise to you that the job with the most workers is that of retail salesperson. Over 4.4 million Americans are employed in this job category. This job pays very little but also carries almost no benefits. Then we wonder why many of the 46 million Americans on food stamps actually have jobs.
But let us look at the top fields more carefully:
Source: BLS
The top 4 employment sectors are:
-Retail salesperson with 4,485,180 employedOver 13 million Americans are employed in these four industries alone that pay very low wages. These are the top jobs in our country. The next top field is nursing which does pay a good wage but requires people to go to college. Many public schools that offer nursing programs are heavily impacted many with waiting lists that go on for years. Private schools are there of course, but tuition is soaring beyond wage growth so many are forced with choosing between a life of minimum wage or going into debt to finance their education.
-Cashiers with 3,343,470 employed
-Food prep and service workers with 3,022,880
-Office clerks with 2,832,010
Following nursing, the next top employment sector is waiters and waitresses. This is another sector that pays little and offers virtually no benefits. Next? Customer service reps. In fact, out of the top 10 employment sectors in the US only one pays what many would consider a livable wage.
We covered income data in a previous post and some had a hard time understanding why the tax bracket with the largest raw number of people are those making $15,000 or less:
“As it turns out, the largest tax bracket comes in the form of those making $15,000 or less per year (this group makes up 25% of tax filings).”There is a reason why there are tens of thousands of dollar stores selling items that are largely made outside of the US. Many older Americans, a growing segment of our society, are living day-to-day only because of Social Security. In fact, without Social Security many would be out in the streets living a life of financial destitution.
I’m not sure if we are going to see this trend reverse anytime soon. Certainly the political theme for 2016 is going to be economic. The focus will be on wages and the middle class. But as you can see from the data above, a large portion of our society has been demoted from the middle class into a large low wage economy where debt is a necessity to move forward.
from here
Monday, December 22, 2014
ALEC's Plans To Undo Minimum Wage Increases
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) laid out its blueprint
for 2015 at its annual meeting in early December, making public a plan
that includes attacks on labor unions, paid sick leave, and minimum wage
increases that have proven popular across the political spectrum.
Despite the GOP gains in both Congress and statehouses across the country, the midterm elections saw the passage of several progressive measures fought for years by Republicans. Among those measures were several state and local minimum wage increases.
ALEC is the controversial right-wing lobbying group that has crafted wide-ranging legislation proposed and enacted by conservative legislatures across the country. And contrary to the group’s charge that it doesn’t get involved in so-called social political issues, ALEC has been deeply involved in blocking federal and state funding for abortion care.
Voters in 10 states—including deep-red states South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, and Nebraska—approved minimum wage increases on Election Day, as did many cities across the country. For example, voters in San Francisco approved a $15 minimum wage; the city will slowly increases its minimum wage until it meets that goal.
Half of those who responded to a March poll said they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported a minimum wage increase, according to a Washington Post/ABC News survey. A Public Policy Polling survey released in October showed that overwhelming majorities over voters in conservative states such as North Carolina, Iowa, and Louisiana supported a wage increase.
Those new wage measures will likely get legislative push back in 2015, as ALEC teams up with Republican-controlled state and local governments to push its corporate-driven agenda. At the group’s States & Nation Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., ALEC officials included a presentation on “Minimum Wage Preemption Policies,” among other subjects discussed in its Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force meetings.
ALEC, in a publication made available on its website, charged that states “considering raising their minimum wage risk alienating business and harming their citizens” because such wage raises “artificially” increase the price of food and other goods. The U.S. Labor Department has debunked this charge, along with a variety of other talking points used to combat minimum wage hikes.
ALEC has long prioritized anti-minimum wage laws that the group says harm businesses’ bottom line.
The Center for Media and Democracy recently published a “Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act,” from a 2001 meeting like the one ALEC held this month. That legislative template says it will repeal “any local ‘living wage’ mandates, ordinances or laws enacted by political subdivisions of the state. It also prohibits political subdivisions from enacting laws establishing ‘living wage’ mandates on private businesses, including those businesses that have service contracts with and/or receive financial assistance from such political subdivisions of state government.”
The organization produced a “Starting Minimum Wage Repeal Act” in 1996, in which ALEC found that “starting wage laws represent an unfunded mandate on business by the government, and disproportionately make it difficult for small business—the engine of job creation—to hire new employees due to artificially high wage rates.”
ALEC has faced a kind of corporate exodus this year. Many of the group’s high-profile partners have severed ties and publicly lambasted the group. In September, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt announced that the company was leaving ALEC, saying that the right-wing coalition had been “lying’” about climate change.
Since Google’s decision, a handful of other corporations have left, including Yahoo!, Yelp, and AOL.
Minimum wage laws were only one of many topics discussed at the ALEC meeting in December. Other issues included a paid sick days prevention bill, a “Medicaid Anti-Crowd-Out Act,” which would prevent low-income people from enrolling in Medicaid if they can receive health insurance through an employer, and a continued discussion on how to block climate change legislation.
from here
The Socialist Party and SOYMB argues for an end to the wages system overall. No minimum wage, no maximum wage, no average wage - but an end to wage slavery. No mortgage, no bills, no tax, no debt. Production for use, not profit, and free access to the common wealth. Forget the futility of fighting constantly for reforms. Support Socialism.
Despite the GOP gains in both Congress and statehouses across the country, the midterm elections saw the passage of several progressive measures fought for years by Republicans. Among those measures were several state and local minimum wage increases.
ALEC is the controversial right-wing lobbying group that has crafted wide-ranging legislation proposed and enacted by conservative legislatures across the country. And contrary to the group’s charge that it doesn’t get involved in so-called social political issues, ALEC has been deeply involved in blocking federal and state funding for abortion care.
Voters in 10 states—including deep-red states South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, and Nebraska—approved minimum wage increases on Election Day, as did many cities across the country. For example, voters in San Francisco approved a $15 minimum wage; the city will slowly increases its minimum wage until it meets that goal.
Half of those who responded to a March poll said they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported a minimum wage increase, according to a Washington Post/ABC News survey. A Public Policy Polling survey released in October showed that overwhelming majorities over voters in conservative states such as North Carolina, Iowa, and Louisiana supported a wage increase.
Those new wage measures will likely get legislative push back in 2015, as ALEC teams up with Republican-controlled state and local governments to push its corporate-driven agenda. At the group’s States & Nation Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., ALEC officials included a presentation on “Minimum Wage Preemption Policies,” among other subjects discussed in its Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force meetings.
ALEC, in a publication made available on its website, charged that states “considering raising their minimum wage risk alienating business and harming their citizens” because such wage raises “artificially” increase the price of food and other goods. The U.S. Labor Department has debunked this charge, along with a variety of other talking points used to combat minimum wage hikes.
ALEC has long prioritized anti-minimum wage laws that the group says harm businesses’ bottom line.
The Center for Media and Democracy recently published a “Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act,” from a 2001 meeting like the one ALEC held this month. That legislative template says it will repeal “any local ‘living wage’ mandates, ordinances or laws enacted by political subdivisions of the state. It also prohibits political subdivisions from enacting laws establishing ‘living wage’ mandates on private businesses, including those businesses that have service contracts with and/or receive financial assistance from such political subdivisions of state government.”
The organization produced a “Starting Minimum Wage Repeal Act” in 1996, in which ALEC found that “starting wage laws represent an unfunded mandate on business by the government, and disproportionately make it difficult for small business—the engine of job creation—to hire new employees due to artificially high wage rates.”
ALEC has faced a kind of corporate exodus this year. Many of the group’s high-profile partners have severed ties and publicly lambasted the group. In September, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt announced that the company was leaving ALEC, saying that the right-wing coalition had been “lying’” about climate change.
Since Google’s decision, a handful of other corporations have left, including Yahoo!, Yelp, and AOL.
Minimum wage laws were only one of many topics discussed at the ALEC meeting in December. Other issues included a paid sick days prevention bill, a “Medicaid Anti-Crowd-Out Act,” which would prevent low-income people from enrolling in Medicaid if they can receive health insurance through an employer, and a continued discussion on how to block climate change legislation.
from here
The Socialist Party and SOYMB argues for an end to the wages system overall. No minimum wage, no maximum wage, no average wage - but an end to wage slavery. No mortgage, no bills, no tax, no debt. Production for use, not profit, and free access to the common wealth. Forget the futility of fighting constantly for reforms. Support Socialism.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
What Federal Minimum Wage Means In Numbers
If you have a job that pays the federal minimum wage, an hour of your work is worth $7.25, before taxes. Here are some numbers to help you understand what it means to be making the federal minimum wage, and why it’s long past time for an increase:
62
The number of months since the last minimum wage increase, in July 2009.12
The number of months between each of the last three minimum wage increases, to $5.85 in July 2007, then to $6.55 in July 2008, and finally to the current $7.25 minimum in July 2009.23
The number of states — not including Washington, D.C. — that have raised the minimum wage above the federal rate. The highest state minimum wage is in Washington state, at $9.32 an hour — still below the proposed federal minimum.
5.8%
The purchasing power the federal minimum wage has lost to inflation since the last time it was raised, according to Pew data from 2013. The left-leaning National Employment Law Project reports that the real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968, when its $1.60-an-hour rate would have been worth close to $10.50 in today’s economy.
$21.72
What the minimum wage would have been in 2012 if it had kept up with worker productivity since the late-1940s, according to a study published last year.1,532,000
The number of hourly workers who were making the federal minimum wage in 2013, according to Pew.An additional 1.8 million tipped employees, full-time students, disabled workers and others holding jobs exempted from federal minimum wage requirements earned wages of less than $7.25 an hour. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour.
27,800,000
The number of workers who would see an increase in wages if the federal minimum were to be increased to $10.10 over three years. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 88 percent of them are older than 20 and a third are over 40. National Employment Law Project says two-thirds of all low-wage workers were employed by large, highly profitable corporations.5,000,000
The number of people who would have been lifted out of poverty under the plan to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 over three years, according to a study published late last year.The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that around 500,000 jobs may be eliminated if the minimum wage was raised to $10.10, though other estimates have suggested the impact would be significantly smaller.
$267.80
The weekly take-home pay for a 40-hour-a-week minimum-wage employee, after Social Security and Medicare taxes. That adds up to $13,926.38 per year, or just over $1,150 per month. The commonly cited minimum wage annual salary for a 40-hour-a-week worker is $15,080 — before taxes.$1,099
The average monthly apartment rental price in the United States in the second quarter of 2014, according to real estate data firm Reis Inc. This is almost as much as you’d make in a month on a single minimum-wage income, which is one reason why minimum-wage workers typically can’t afford to be the primary breadwinners of their families.$420
The average price of a one-bedroom rental in Benton County, Iowa, the cheapest U.S. zip code, according to Find The Best. After paying for rent, a single, full-time minimum-wage employee would have less than $750 to spend on everything else for the rest of the month.$163
The average a household pays for basic gas and electricity per month, according to an analysis of the spending habits of Mint.com users across the nation in 2011. Utility prices have since risen in many places.$3.34
The average U.S. price for a gallon of gasoline , as of the last week of September. If a car has a 15-gallon tank, it would cost around $50 to fill up. That’s about a full day’s pay on minimum wage.On top of gas, drivers must pay for car insurance, which according to a 2011 report came out to a nationwide average of around $800 a year. Premiums have increased in many places since, with estimates of average rates as high $1,500 a year. That would be more than a month’s salary for a minimum-wage earner.
$91
The price of the cheapest monthly pass for the SEPTA public transportation system in Philadelphia, one of the largest U.S. cities without state or local laws raising the minimum wage above the federal standard. A minimum-wage earner who relies on public transportation to get to work in Philadelphia would spend more than $1,000 each year on these passes, from annual pay of around $14,000.3,531,034
The number of hours a federal minimum wage worker would have to log to match the compensation package offered to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon for fiscal 2014, before taxes.Walmart, the largest private employer in the U.S., announced this year that it wouldn’t oppose a hike to the federal minimum wage, so long as the proposal didn’t specifically call out the company’s business practices. Walmart’s president noted at the time that only 5,000 of the company’s 1 million or so U.S. hourly employees currently make the federal minimum wage, though many more make less than the $10.10 rate proposed in Congress.
taken from here
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Workers Of The World - 7
Los Angeles Hotel Workers
The Los Angeles City Council passed one of the highest minimum wage requirements in the country this week, which will apply to employees at big hotels around the city.
In a 12-3 vote on Wednesday, council members backed an ordinance establishing a minimum hourly wage of $15.37 for workers at Los Angeles hotels with at least 125 guest rooms. If passed in a final vote next week, the ordinance would go into effect in July for hotels with more than 300 rooms. Those with at least 125 but fewer than 300 would have to comply by July 2016. Analyses suggest the measure, which was backed by organized labor, neighborhood coalitions, and the ACLU of Southern California, would affect anywhere from 5,000 to 13,000 low-income workers.
They deserve better, organizers said, because while the thriving hotel industry has benefited from tax breaks and high tourist demand, low-paid employees still need to work two jobs just to make ends meet.
"The hospitality industry is one of the few industries that came out of the recession and has been seeing record profit,” Raise LA Coalition’s Rachel Torres told CBS-LA. "But unfortunately, hotel workers have been living below poverty."
In 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the leisure and hospitality industry had the highest percentage—19 percent—of workers earning hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage, $7.25. The California minimum wage is currently set at $9 an hour.
Opponents of the measure said it was a job killer or would discourage development. "Today a whole bunch of people in the hotel industry lost their jobs; they just don't know it yet," said Ruben Gonzalez, senior vice president with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, in the LA Times.
But in the face of conflicting positions, the low-paid worker's plight was more compelling to lawmakers.
"I am not naïve to the fact that there will be trade offs, including the possibility of some job loss," said Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who backed the wage hike measure. "However, this will help lift many out of poverty. My heart voted with the hotel workers, most of them women, who are struggling to balance a job and family just to afford to pay rent. At the end of the day, between the intellect and the heart, the heart wins out."
The Los Angeles City Council passed one of the highest minimum wage requirements in the country this week, which will apply to employees at big hotels around the city.
In a 12-3 vote on Wednesday, council members backed an ordinance establishing a minimum hourly wage of $15.37 for workers at Los Angeles hotels with at least 125 guest rooms. If passed in a final vote next week, the ordinance would go into effect in July for hotels with more than 300 rooms. Those with at least 125 but fewer than 300 would have to comply by July 2016. Analyses suggest the measure, which was backed by organized labor, neighborhood coalitions, and the ACLU of Southern California, would affect anywhere from 5,000 to 13,000 low-income workers.
They deserve better, organizers said, because while the thriving hotel industry has benefited from tax breaks and high tourist demand, low-paid employees still need to work two jobs just to make ends meet.
"The hospitality industry is one of the few industries that came out of the recession and has been seeing record profit,” Raise LA Coalition’s Rachel Torres told CBS-LA. "But unfortunately, hotel workers have been living below poverty."
In 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the leisure and hospitality industry had the highest percentage—19 percent—of workers earning hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage, $7.25. The California minimum wage is currently set at $9 an hour.
Opponents of the measure said it was a job killer or would discourage development. "Today a whole bunch of people in the hotel industry lost their jobs; they just don't know it yet," said Ruben Gonzalez, senior vice president with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, in the LA Times.
But in the face of conflicting positions, the low-paid worker's plight was more compelling to lawmakers.
"I am not naïve to the fact that there will be trade offs, including the possibility of some job loss," said Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who backed the wage hike measure. "However, this will help lift many out of poverty. My heart voted with the hotel workers, most of them women, who are struggling to balance a job and family just to afford to pay rent. At the end of the day, between the intellect and the heart, the heart wins out."
SOYMB supports action which benefits workers' conditions. This particular action will benefit a few thousand workers in Los Angeles and good luck to them. But how will those whose jobs are lost as a consequence look back to what was fought for and declared won? How will it be for those waiting until 2016 for the increase and what will it be worth then? What about all those working in hotels with less than 125 guest rooms? Overall these 'baby step' reforms (as I've heard them called) are just part of the ongoing pattern of employer/employee relationship. If we have empathy with these particular workers don't we have similar empathy for all workers? Socialism looks beyond reforms of any kind to a revolution of all the workers of the world in which the wages system itself will finally be abolished.
JS
Sunday, March 02, 2014
Oklahoma Legislators Declare War on Working Poor
It’s official: Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and Republicans in
the Oklahoma Legislature don’t care about the working poor or their
children, and in fact, are trying to declare a “state of emergency” in
order to assure that those in poverty stay that way.
Senate Bill 1023, written by Tulsa Senator Dan Newberry and co-sponsored by Fairview Rep. Joe Hickman, who recently replaced T.W. Shannon as Speaker of the House, would make it illegal for any “municipality or other subdivision of this state” to raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma, where poverty is at a 10-year high.
The proposed legislation is so important that it included these ominous words: “It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.”
What on earth has our elected officials in such a panic that they feel the need to circle the legislative wagons and fend off the hungry masses, lest they storm the Capitol and demand an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work?
It’s simple, on Thursday, an initiative petition to raise Oklahoma City’s minimum wage to a living wage of $10.10, endorsed by the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation, will be filed at City Hall, to begin gathering signatures to put it to a vote of the people. That’s right, the potential “riot in the streets” emergency is nothing more than the people of Oklahoma daring to assert their federal and state constitutional right to petition.
This past Monday, Republicans in the Oklahoma State Legislature began to fast track the anti-living wage bill, which could effectively make it illegal for the working poor to earn enough money pay their rent or buy food for their children and, at the same time, effectively take away our constitutional right to petition altogether. Done, and…done.
Read on here
Senate Bill 1023, written by Tulsa Senator Dan Newberry and co-sponsored by Fairview Rep. Joe Hickman, who recently replaced T.W. Shannon as Speaker of the House, would make it illegal for any “municipality or other subdivision of this state” to raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma, where poverty is at a 10-year high.
The proposed legislation is so important that it included these ominous words: “It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.”
What on earth has our elected officials in such a panic that they feel the need to circle the legislative wagons and fend off the hungry masses, lest they storm the Capitol and demand an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work?
It’s simple, on Thursday, an initiative petition to raise Oklahoma City’s minimum wage to a living wage of $10.10, endorsed by the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation, will be filed at City Hall, to begin gathering signatures to put it to a vote of the people. That’s right, the potential “riot in the streets” emergency is nothing more than the people of Oklahoma daring to assert their federal and state constitutional right to petition.
This past Monday, Republicans in the Oklahoma State Legislature began to fast track the anti-living wage bill, which could effectively make it illegal for the working poor to earn enough money pay their rent or buy food for their children and, at the same time, effectively take away our constitutional right to petition altogether. Done, and…done.
Read on here
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Pity The Billionaires - A Wage Slave's Point Of View
Protesters
calling for higher wages for fast-food workers stand outside a
McDonald's restaurant in Oakland, California December 5, 2013 (Photo:
Reuters)
But there are deeper reasons for plumbing the pathology of Perkins’ rant. As background, let’s recall some basic facts.
Over the past 30-odd years, since Reagan, a vast share of the nation’s income and wealth has been transferred from the poor, working, and middle classes to the very wealthy. Twenty five years ago, the top 1% of income earners pulled in 12% of the nation’s income, today they get twice that, 25%. And the rate of transfer is accelerating.
In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 67% of all the growth in the entire U.S. economy went to the top 1% of income earners. Between 2009 and 2012, 95% of all the new income produced in the economy went to the top 1%. What about everybody else?
Since the late 1970s, labor productivity in the U.S. has risen 259%. If the fruits of that productivity had been distributed according to the capitalist ideal that a person gets what he produces, the average person’s income would be more than double what it is today.
The reality?
Median male compensation, adjusted for inflation, is lower today than it was in 1975, a full generation ago. A staggering 40% of all Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage. It’s the exact opposite of the cultural myth of shared prosperity and opportunity for all.
The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is getting poorer. That is not an ideological statement. It is an empirical one. Perkins believes that simply discussing such facts cannot be allowed. The rich may only be addressed in terms that signal deification.
But underlying Perkins’ tirade is a conviction that the super-rich have earned everything they’ve gotten and so are beyond reproach. Have they?
Read the whole article here - recommended
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Capitalists for Higher Wages
Silicon Valley multimillionaire, Ron Unz, supports the demand for a higher minimum wage. More attractive wages in low-wage job sectors (such as washing dishes or stocking supermarket shelves) will draw “legitimate” workers, which will diminish employment opportunities for undocumented immigrants competing in the same job market.
“The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants come to America for jobs and just as business lobbyists endlessly claim, they are hired “because they take the jobs that Americans just won’t do.” But the reason Americans won’t do those jobs is because the wages are too low. Raise the wages to a more liveable figure of $12 per hour or higher and millions of Americans would eagerly fill the positions”
So Unz sees the wage boost as a long term deterrent against future migrants “flooding” into the U.S. and snatching up jobs to which “native” workers would otherwise be entitled. SOYMB will not concentrate on the validity of such a claim except to point out that it has been challenged by those who say a higher minimum wage serves as a magnet, attracting immigration.
More importantly, there is far more to the decision to migrate than demand-and-supply economics. People come to reunite with family members, to pursue educational opportunities, to escape persecution. Migration is a basic, universal, social impulse, and far from a harmful one.
There is also the fact that one section of the capitalist class does not benefit from a low wage economy but is required to pay the taxes to maintain it. Walmart rely on suppressing wages for their massive workforce. Other employers view minimum-wage increase as a strategy to reduce public assistance to the working poor and a state subsidy to low pay businesses since higher incomes would reduce the poor's reliance on government benefits like food stamps. Some also see a minimum-wage hike as part of what is needed to be done to boost the economy by raising consumer spending and their market.
From here
“The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants come to America for jobs and just as business lobbyists endlessly claim, they are hired “because they take the jobs that Americans just won’t do.” But the reason Americans won’t do those jobs is because the wages are too low. Raise the wages to a more liveable figure of $12 per hour or higher and millions of Americans would eagerly fill the positions”
So Unz sees the wage boost as a long term deterrent against future migrants “flooding” into the U.S. and snatching up jobs to which “native” workers would otherwise be entitled. SOYMB will not concentrate on the validity of such a claim except to point out that it has been challenged by those who say a higher minimum wage serves as a magnet, attracting immigration.
More importantly, there is far more to the decision to migrate than demand-and-supply economics. People come to reunite with family members, to pursue educational opportunities, to escape persecution. Migration is a basic, universal, social impulse, and far from a harmful one.
There is also the fact that one section of the capitalist class does not benefit from a low wage economy but is required to pay the taxes to maintain it. Walmart rely on suppressing wages for their massive workforce. Other employers view minimum-wage increase as a strategy to reduce public assistance to the working poor and a state subsidy to low pay businesses since higher incomes would reduce the poor's reliance on government benefits like food stamps. Some also see a minimum-wage hike as part of what is needed to be done to boost the economy by raising consumer spending and their market.
From here
Sunday, November 03, 2013
A Living Wage is no Life
The number of people who are paid less than a "living wage" has leapt by more than 400,000 in a year to over 5.2 million, amid mounting evidence that the economic recovery is failing to help millions of working families.
Matthew Bolton of Citizens UK, an organisation campaigning for the living wage, said: “Every one of those five million working people has a story of struggle: working two jobs, no time with the children, choosing eating over heating.”
A report for the international tax and auditing firm KPMG also shows that nearly three-quarters of 18-to-21-year-olds now earn below this level – a voluntary rate of pay regarded as the minimum to meet the cost of living in the UK.
According to the report, women are disproportionately stuck on pay below the living wage rate, currently £8.55 in London and £7.45 elsewhere. Some 27% of women are not paid the living wage, compared with 16% of men. Part-time workers are also far more likely to receive low pay than full-time workers, with 43% paid below living-wage rates compared with 12% of full-timers.
Save the Children’s data show that the number of children living in families with earnings below the living wage has risen from 1.82 million in 2010-11 to 1.96 million in 2011-12. The charity said it was increasingly concerned that 1.7 million households struggling with low incomes would have lower entitlements under the universal credit welfare reforms.
Save the Children's Priya Kothari said: "More children risk being pushed into poverty because work isn't paying enough; two-thirds of children in poverty live in households where one or both parents work. How can that be right?”
David Miliband pledged that a future Labour government would subsidise companies paying the living wage. The demand for a living wage is an old one, going back to the ILP in the 1920s and beyond. This was proposed first as a remedy to the crisis that many believed was caused by under-consumption, later as a "transitional demand" by which capitalism would be bankrupted. Presumably it is a wage that would allow a worker to afford decent housing, enough proper food, new clothes, to go on holiday and run a car. We have nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this. We hope the campaign to get employers to pay some of their workers more succeeds, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage”. There’s nothing fair about the wages system and we’re against people having to work for a wage to live. Socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. There will also be unintended consequences of implementing Miliband’s policy such as the subsidies may well encourage companies to lower all wages. The employers’ trump card is going to be “Look, you are not going to be worse off, since your total income from us and the state is going to be more or less the same”. Employers will taking this subsidy into account when fixing or negotiating the wages they pay?
No amount of reform will eliminate the irreconcilable clash of interest between the capitalist and the working class. Like all reforms of capitalism living wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class.
Marx didn’t think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.’” (Letter to Sorge, 5 November 1880)
THE WORKER'S MIRAGE
The dangling carrot 'Henry' must pursue,
Still out of reach, but never out of view,
With every step he thinks 'Tis mine at last
But so did Henry's father in the past,
A greater stride he thinks will win the prize,
But still the carrot dangles 'fore his eyes,'
Tantalisingly, promising a chew,
Still out of reach, but never out of view.
There is no need of blinders for this moke,
He only sees the carrot, not the joke,
There never was a heavier burdened mule,
There never was a more obstinate fool,
As age and toil combine to slow his pace,
Yet still the carrot stares him in the face,
Still goads him on, his efforts to renew,
Still out of reach, but never out of view.
The whip or stick could never have obtained,
A greater service, as with muscles strained,
And clenched teeth that strive to make the bite,
He labour on each day, sometimes at night,
Until the eyes grow dim and slow the tread,
And chest supports the balding, drooping head,
The once proud prance becomes a shambling gait,
The tired torso begs to pause and wait.
And so there comes a time when he no more,
May grunt and swear, and sweat from every pore,
But there are not green pastures for this ass,
In which his few remaining years may pass,
The carrot now forever, from his view,
A pittance of a pension is his due,
His life mis-spent, through chasing a mirage,
The dangling carrot known as 'Living Wage'
JAMES BOYLE (3/1/62)
Matthew Bolton of Citizens UK, an organisation campaigning for the living wage, said: “Every one of those five million working people has a story of struggle: working two jobs, no time with the children, choosing eating over heating.”
A report for the international tax and auditing firm KPMG also shows that nearly three-quarters of 18-to-21-year-olds now earn below this level – a voluntary rate of pay regarded as the minimum to meet the cost of living in the UK.
According to the report, women are disproportionately stuck on pay below the living wage rate, currently £8.55 in London and £7.45 elsewhere. Some 27% of women are not paid the living wage, compared with 16% of men. Part-time workers are also far more likely to receive low pay than full-time workers, with 43% paid below living-wage rates compared with 12% of full-timers.
Save the Children’s data show that the number of children living in families with earnings below the living wage has risen from 1.82 million in 2010-11 to 1.96 million in 2011-12. The charity said it was increasingly concerned that 1.7 million households struggling with low incomes would have lower entitlements under the universal credit welfare reforms.
Save the Children's Priya Kothari said: "More children risk being pushed into poverty because work isn't paying enough; two-thirds of children in poverty live in households where one or both parents work. How can that be right?”
David Miliband pledged that a future Labour government would subsidise companies paying the living wage. The demand for a living wage is an old one, going back to the ILP in the 1920s and beyond. This was proposed first as a remedy to the crisis that many believed was caused by under-consumption, later as a "transitional demand" by which capitalism would be bankrupted. Presumably it is a wage that would allow a worker to afford decent housing, enough proper food, new clothes, to go on holiday and run a car. We have nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this. We hope the campaign to get employers to pay some of their workers more succeeds, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage”. There’s nothing fair about the wages system and we’re against people having to work for a wage to live. Socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. There will also be unintended consequences of implementing Miliband’s policy such as the subsidies may well encourage companies to lower all wages. The employers’ trump card is going to be “Look, you are not going to be worse off, since your total income from us and the state is going to be more or less the same”. Employers will taking this subsidy into account when fixing or negotiating the wages they pay?
No amount of reform will eliminate the irreconcilable clash of interest between the capitalist and the working class. Like all reforms of capitalism living wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class.
Marx didn’t think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.’” (Letter to Sorge, 5 November 1880)
THE WORKER'S MIRAGE
The dangling carrot 'Henry' must pursue,
Still out of reach, but never out of view,
With every step he thinks 'Tis mine at last
But so did Henry's father in the past,
A greater stride he thinks will win the prize,
But still the carrot dangles 'fore his eyes,'
Tantalisingly, promising a chew,
Still out of reach, but never out of view.
There is no need of blinders for this moke,
He only sees the carrot, not the joke,
There never was a heavier burdened mule,
There never was a more obstinate fool,
As age and toil combine to slow his pace,
Yet still the carrot stares him in the face,
Still goads him on, his efforts to renew,
Still out of reach, but never out of view.
The whip or stick could never have obtained,
A greater service, as with muscles strained,
And clenched teeth that strive to make the bite,
He labour on each day, sometimes at night,
Until the eyes grow dim and slow the tread,
And chest supports the balding, drooping head,
The once proud prance becomes a shambling gait,
The tired torso begs to pause and wait.
And so there comes a time when he no more,
May grunt and swear, and sweat from every pore,
But there are not green pastures for this ass,
In which his few remaining years may pass,
The carrot now forever, from his view,
A pittance of a pension is his due,
His life mis-spent, through chasing a mirage,
The dangling carrot known as 'Living Wage'
JAMES BOYLE (3/1/62)
Monday, September 02, 2013
Minimum Wage $15. The American Dream?
Why Walmart's response to my petition is brutally irrelevant. Robert Reich
Friday, August 30, 2013.
Yesterday a Walmart spokesman criticized the petition I’ve been circulating that asks Walmart (and McDonalds) to pay their employees at least $15 an hour.
Walmart’s spokesman told the Huffington Post that my petition fails to mention that Walmart is a major job creator and that it promotes some of its employees.
The spokesman is correct. In fact, Walmart is America’s biggest employer. And I’d be shocked if some of its employees weren’t promoted.
But the brute fact is Walmart’s typical employee is still paid less than $9 an hour.
To offer lousy jobs on such an extraordinary scale is not something to brag about. Indeed, the point of the petition — as well as the national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour — is to recognize that most people who work for big-box retailers like Walmart, as well as those who work in the fast-food industry, are adults. They are responsible for bringing home a significant share of their family’s income. A decent society requires they be paid enough to lift them and their families out of poverty.
When Martin Luther King, Jr., led the March to Washington for Jobs and Justice, fifty years ago this week, one of the objectives of that March was to raise the minimum wage to $2 an hour. $2 an hour in 1963, adjusted for inflation, comes to over $15 an hour in today’s dollars. Walmart doesn’t come close to the American dream.
Absolutely! And $15 an hour wouldn't get anyone much closer to the elusive, fabricated American dream either. In the current system there will always be pay rises, pay cuts, disputes about pay plus different levels of unemployment and poverty just as there have been for generations. What would benefit the workers of the world en masse would be a mental and physical revolution calling for nothing less than the abolition of the wages system and the real way forward out of this nightmare of capitalism.
JS
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Fact of the day
The UK national minimum wage is no longer working because its value has fallen, one of its key architects said as a new study showed it could be worth less in 2017 than it was in 2004.
The minimum wage has dropped in value in real terms in the past five years after being pegged to wages, which have not kept pace with inflation.
The minimum wage has dropped in value in real terms in the past five years after being pegged to wages, which have not kept pace with inflation.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Minimum wage anniversary
Tuesday, June 25, marks the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, New Deal legislation mandating a federal minimum wage that now applies to most work, and most workers, in the United States. Originally set at 25 cents, the minimum wage has risen occasionally since 1938 to its current hourly level of $7.25, where it has been since 2009. The minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 since 1991.
Today, a minimum wage worker lives on $3,000 less than the poverty line — and the minimum wage is worth only 37 percent of the average wage. In the 1960s the minimum wage was roughly half the average wage.
If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969, it would be around $10.70 today. If it had kept up with productivity growth, it would be $18.72. Meanwhile, if it matched the wage growth of the wealthiest 1 percent, it would be $28.34.
Wages grew and hours increased across the board between 1979 and 2007 — but hours increased the most and wages the least for the lowest income workers. The share of workers in “good jobs”– paying more than $37,000 a year and providing healthcare and retirement benefits — fell even though the average age and education level of workers rose.
10.4 million individuals were classified as the “working poor” in 2011. People who fall in the working poor category have been part of the labor force for at least 27 weeks, but their incomes are below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The wealthiest 1 percent are doing quite well, thank you. Their real earnings have skyrocketed 275 percent over the past 30 years.
In many US states, the minimum wage laws are but barely enforced, in part because there's little or no money budgeted for enforcement. But it's also because the government agencies charged with enforcing the laws are clearly not much interested in carrying out their mandate. Equally at fault are the governors and state legislators who've done virtually nothing to try to help their state's neediest workers earn a decent living. They have to be aware that no one can make a decent living at the current minimum wage rates. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi – have no agency assigned to enforce the minimum wage laws and other laws designed to protect workers rights. Employers have little or no incentive to obey wage and hour laws if the only repercussion for violating them is to have to pay wages owed in the first place.
In Alberta, Canada Dan Meades, director of Vibrant Communities Calgary, said “The question I would ask today is how many people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the minimum wage increase? And the answer is zero,”
The Socialist Party has nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage" and even if we think that ideally this should be tied to struggling to abolish the wages system altogether. What we criticise is to increase the present legal minimum wage and call the result a “living wage”
Let’s assume for a moment that a law forcing employers to pay a higher minimum wage was passed. What would happen?
First, a few employers would go bankrupt but probably not all who presently plead “poverty” profits!!. Other employers however would withdraw their capital from producing certain goods or services, so their price would rise. Eventually this would stabilise at a new, higher level at which employers would be able to make a profit even when paying the increased minimum wage. So the cost of living would go up, including for workers on the minimum wage. Second, given the increased labour costs, the introduction of previously unused labour-saving machinery would become cheaper vis-Ã -vis employing living labour. It is generally accepted that higher wages does lead employers to introduce machinery. Employers would do this. So there’d be job losses and unemployment, particularly amongst the unskilled, would grow.
Nor did Marx think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.' "
Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. Socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. To adapt Marx, workers should replace the demand for a “Living Wage” by the revolutionary demand for the “Abolition of the Wages System” Within capitalism, the fight to improve wages is indispensible but workers should take the next step - campaign to abolish wages .
Today, a minimum wage worker lives on $3,000 less than the poverty line — and the minimum wage is worth only 37 percent of the average wage. In the 1960s the minimum wage was roughly half the average wage.
If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969, it would be around $10.70 today. If it had kept up with productivity growth, it would be $18.72. Meanwhile, if it matched the wage growth of the wealthiest 1 percent, it would be $28.34.
Wages grew and hours increased across the board between 1979 and 2007 — but hours increased the most and wages the least for the lowest income workers. The share of workers in “good jobs”– paying more than $37,000 a year and providing healthcare and retirement benefits — fell even though the average age and education level of workers rose.
10.4 million individuals were classified as the “working poor” in 2011. People who fall in the working poor category have been part of the labor force for at least 27 weeks, but their incomes are below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The wealthiest 1 percent are doing quite well, thank you. Their real earnings have skyrocketed 275 percent over the past 30 years.
In many US states, the minimum wage laws are but barely enforced, in part because there's little or no money budgeted for enforcement. But it's also because the government agencies charged with enforcing the laws are clearly not much interested in carrying out their mandate. Equally at fault are the governors and state legislators who've done virtually nothing to try to help their state's neediest workers earn a decent living. They have to be aware that no one can make a decent living at the current minimum wage rates. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi – have no agency assigned to enforce the minimum wage laws and other laws designed to protect workers rights. Employers have little or no incentive to obey wage and hour laws if the only repercussion for violating them is to have to pay wages owed in the first place.
In Alberta, Canada Dan Meades, director of Vibrant Communities Calgary, said “The question I would ask today is how many people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the minimum wage increase? And the answer is zero,”
The Socialist Party has nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage" and even if we think that ideally this should be tied to struggling to abolish the wages system altogether. What we criticise is to increase the present legal minimum wage and call the result a “living wage”
Let’s assume for a moment that a law forcing employers to pay a higher minimum wage was passed. What would happen?
First, a few employers would go bankrupt but probably not all who presently plead “poverty” profits!!. Other employers however would withdraw their capital from producing certain goods or services, so their price would rise. Eventually this would stabilise at a new, higher level at which employers would be able to make a profit even when paying the increased minimum wage. So the cost of living would go up, including for workers on the minimum wage. Second, given the increased labour costs, the introduction of previously unused labour-saving machinery would become cheaper vis-Ã -vis employing living labour. It is generally accepted that higher wages does lead employers to introduce machinery. Employers would do this. So there’d be job losses and unemployment, particularly amongst the unskilled, would grow.
Nor did Marx think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.' "
Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. Socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. To adapt Marx, workers should replace the demand for a “Living Wage” by the revolutionary demand for the “Abolition of the Wages System” Within capitalism, the fight to improve wages is indispensible but workers should take the next step - campaign to abolish wages .
Friday, February 22, 2013
The US minimum wage
“It’s just really ridiculous to think that business owners can’t pay today at least as much as what they paid four decades ago,” says Holly Sklar, founder of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which has attracted support from more than 4,000 small business groups and owners.
“Our women [business owners] who pay a living wage have an advantage over their larger counterparts who don’t,” says Margot Dorfman, chief executive officer of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, an organization with 500,000 members, three-quarters of whom are small business owners.
The International Franchise Association Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy Jay Perron says it’s not yet a primary concern for its members.
John Schall, employs around 40, starts his workers at $10 an hour. The argument about a minimum wage hike imperiling small business “never rings true,” says the longtime restaurateur. “If somebody came to you with a business plan and said, ‘If I can pay $8 an hour, this is a great business and you should invest in it, but if I have to pay $9 an hour, I’m screwed,’ nobody would” take the business seriously" he says. “It would be way better if the minimum wage was higher across the board for everybody, and everybody had to pay an entry-level position at a living wage.”
Monday, January 21, 2013
Martin Luther King Day
It’s Martin Luther King Day in the US. King was never a Marxist. The term “class war” was never used by him. He equated "Communism" with the Soviet Union and “the denial of human freedom and totalitarianism.” However, his vision was of no want, no disharmony, no violence, no slavery, no white supremacy, no injustice, and no inequality. King called for ”a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation.” This vision is not antagonistic to the communist vision of a classless and stateless society where each person lives according to his or her needs. In an address to the National Maritime Union in 1962, he pointed out that both Negroes and seamen “were brought frequently to their job in chains.” In 1961, he reminded delegates to the United Automobile Workers union convention that both sets of fighters stood up for their rights by sitting down. At the 1961 AFL-CIO convention, King told delegates, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community.” In union speech after union speech, he made the point that while life for Black Americans was hard, ”millions of poor White Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive.” and that fighters for justice in any of its forms will be met with fierce resistance from the economic and political power structure. He said concessions, whether wage gains, the weekend, the eight-hour day, voting rights, or non-segregated hotels and restaurants, will only be made begrudgingly. What they are forced “to give to us with one hand, they will snatch back with the other hand.” It was one thing for blacks to win the right to sit at a lunch counter. It was another thing for black and other poor people to get the money to buy a lunch. He argued that "No worker can maintain his morale or sustain his spirit if in the market place his capacities are declared to be worthless to society."
Friday, August 17, 2012
Employ Prisoners, Sack Workers
From the Guardian:
A business is bussing in inmates from an open prison 21 miles away and paying them only £3 a day to work in its call centre. The
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed that dozens of prisoners from
Prescoed prison in Monmouthshire, south Wales, had done "work
experience" for at least two months at a rate of 40p an hour in the
private company's telephone sales division in Cardiff.
People working in the prisons sector described the scheme as "disgusting" and a "worrying development". After establishing an arrangement with minimum-security HMP Prescoed late last year, roofing and environmental refitting company Becoming Green has taken on 23 prisoners. Currently, 12 are being paid 6% of the minimum wage.
When contacted by the Guardian last month, that figure was 17 – 15% of the company's call centre staff. The company confirmed that since it started using prisoners, it had fired other workers. Former employees put the number at 17 since December. However, the firm said firings were part of the "normal call-centre environment" and it had hired other staff in a recent expansion.
Becoming Green said the category D prison had allowed the company to pay the prisoners just £3 a day for at least 40 working days, but added that they could keep them at that pay level for much longer if they wanted. A company spokesman was unable to give the longest time a prisoner had been employed on token wages. The spokesman added that, under the arrangement, they were only allowed to take a maximum of 20% of their total call centre workforce from the prison.
The MoJ confirmed that there was no centralised limit on the length of training placements, which was for prison governors to decide. The ministry said it had sought assurances from Becoming Green that prisoners were put into "genuinely vacant" posts. At the start of the year, the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced an expansion of mainly manufacturing work inside prisons. Against a background of disquiet from unions, he has continued to stress that prisoners would not be putting other people out of work. Clarke said last month that such a development would be "a very serious downside" to the policy.
In a response to questions from the Guardian, the MoJ said: "HMP Prescoed works closely with the company, the probation service, local authorities and community groups to ensure that any impact on the local workforce is minimised." A young former employee of Becoming Green said that staff were told last November that prisoners, whose convictions are understood to range from murder to fraud and drugs offences, were going to start working at the company. "We got a message one day saying that ... [the company] was going to start hiring prisoners.
"So I thought, 'Oh right, people who have been released.' And [my friend] said, 'No, no, no, people who are out on day release.' I thought, 'Can they do that?'"
She said that just before Christmas, about 10 members of the call centre team were fired and then a further seven were sacked. She left a number of months ago after feeling pressured into quitting.
"As they started bringing more and more in, they started firing people … They would have kept their jobs if it wasn't for the prison thing. "They'd passed their probation period, they'd been there for several months. They'd maintained the level they were – that had been perfectly acceptable at that point. Then they [got] these people in for nearly free."
She described the prisoners as "quite nice people" and said that some were very good workers, but added that the wage difference caused resentment. "Everyone was pretty miffed because at the end of the day there's no way you can compete [with £3 a day]."
A second female employee who has been on the dole for almost two months said she was also pushed out of Becoming Green despite meeting all of her performance targets. She declined to be named, worrying about the consequences for job hunting. "I'm currently on jobseeker's allowance because I can't find another job because of all of this happening," she said. A former manager at Becoming Green claimed the company had been creating "reasons to … justify dismissing people from the company so they could get more prison staff in".
"The whole idea of what the company is doing is bringing in free labour for the business and relieving their employed staff of their responsibilities, because obviously it is more cost-effective for the business to have criminals working for them than paying a salary to each person. "I left because I didn't like the way the company was being run," the former manager said. "If people are rubbish in their jobs then get rid of them, I understand that.
"But if people are coming in every day, and are generating a lot of revenue … and the next thing you know is their jobs are on the line, there's no reason why these people should have been fired. I don't think it is right, just to save a few a quid. These people have bills to pay."
The company has itself confirmed that staff had been dismissed since prisoners were taken on in November, but countered that this was part of the normal attrition rate in a demanding business where "targets had to be met".
Nicola Vaughan, senior manager at Becoming Green, said that there had been "performance issues" with staff who had been fired.
"There have been a few people who have been dismissed for various reasons … but if you are trying to imply that we have replaced those people with prisoners then that is far wrong," Vaughan said. "I think perhaps the people you have spoken to are a little little bit disgruntled … At the end of the day the contact centre industry has a very, very high turnover … it's tough."
In January, Clarke laid out plans to double the numbers of those working inside prisons to 20,000 in less than 10 years. However, while convicts working inside prison manufacturing goods have been doing such work for many years, prison campaigners said that working at a £3-a-day training rate for private businesses for a minimum of eight weeks outside of prison walls was a new phenomenon.
"This situation, I haven't heard of before," said Andrew Neilson, from the Howard League for Penal Reform.
"We do welcome these opportunities [for prisoners to work], but it should be on the same basis as anyone else in the community."
"We don't want the issue of prisoners on day-release being employed becoming one that divides people and effectively people are turned against those prisoners because they're seen to be taking people's jobs. That's not what should be happening."
Chris Bath, executive director of reformed offenders' charity Unlock, said he had never heard of such a practice where prisoners were spending so long in the private sector doing work experience on prison wages, and called the move a "worrying development".
Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA prison officers' union, said that for any company to rely on cheap labour of prisoners was "immoral and disgusting".
"The association wants to see prisoners working and leading law-abiding lives, but not at the expense of other workers being sacked or laid off to facilitate it.
"Some employers must be rubbing their hands and the shareholders laughing all the way to the bank," Gillan said.
"The ministers must be held to account if the factual position is this company has sacked workers to employ prisoners … The general public will be outraged if this proves to be widespread, and proper scrutiny of contracts needs to be made public to ensure public confidence."
The MoJ said that prisoners at the company who were being employed at above minimum wage were paying 40% of their salary into the victims' fund. Three of the prisoner employees were understood to be managers at the company.
Speaking about the expansion of prison work from 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners over the next decade, Clarke told the BBC last month: "It would be a very serious downside if we started replacing job opportunities for law-abiding people, and we've been conscious of that all the way through.
"Although we don't pay the prisoners the minimum wage, normally you can't start undercutting British businesses outside."
He added that the CBI was "totally supportive" of the work initiatives.
However, Clarke has not addressed the situation in open prisons, where inmates can still have months left on their sentences, but businesses can now pay them little more than a token wage for their labour.
A Prison Service spokesman said: "We want more prisoners to undertake challenging work, within the discipline of regular working hours, which will help them develop the skills they need to gain employment, reform, and turn away from crime." The spokesman added that prison work "helps to reduce the chance of re-offending by setting up appropriate employment and rehabilitation work in the community".
In a statement, Becoming Green said: "Corporations should have a social responsibility to help society. It feels that if they work with this attitude and behaviour it will help make a better society for all." The company added that this kind of work would "enable [prisoners] to resettle and integrate back into society and not feel the need to re-offend. By working, prisoners can repay the victims of crime rather than be unproductive in prison and by working potentially turn their lives around."
------------------------------------------
So the fact that you can sack workers on one rate and employ almost slave labour in a much lower rate is not an incentive for a company whose sole aim is to maximise profits? Riiiiigggghhht!
SussexSocialist
People working in the prisons sector described the scheme as "disgusting" and a "worrying development". After establishing an arrangement with minimum-security HMP Prescoed late last year, roofing and environmental refitting company Becoming Green has taken on 23 prisoners. Currently, 12 are being paid 6% of the minimum wage.
When contacted by the Guardian last month, that figure was 17 – 15% of the company's call centre staff. The company confirmed that since it started using prisoners, it had fired other workers. Former employees put the number at 17 since December. However, the firm said firings were part of the "normal call-centre environment" and it had hired other staff in a recent expansion.
Becoming Green said the category D prison had allowed the company to pay the prisoners just £3 a day for at least 40 working days, but added that they could keep them at that pay level for much longer if they wanted. A company spokesman was unable to give the longest time a prisoner had been employed on token wages. The spokesman added that, under the arrangement, they were only allowed to take a maximum of 20% of their total call centre workforce from the prison.
The MoJ confirmed that there was no centralised limit on the length of training placements, which was for prison governors to decide. The ministry said it had sought assurances from Becoming Green that prisoners were put into "genuinely vacant" posts. At the start of the year, the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced an expansion of mainly manufacturing work inside prisons. Against a background of disquiet from unions, he has continued to stress that prisoners would not be putting other people out of work. Clarke said last month that such a development would be "a very serious downside" to the policy.
In a response to questions from the Guardian, the MoJ said: "HMP Prescoed works closely with the company, the probation service, local authorities and community groups to ensure that any impact on the local workforce is minimised." A young former employee of Becoming Green said that staff were told last November that prisoners, whose convictions are understood to range from murder to fraud and drugs offences, were going to start working at the company. "We got a message one day saying that ... [the company] was going to start hiring prisoners.
"So I thought, 'Oh right, people who have been released.' And [my friend] said, 'No, no, no, people who are out on day release.' I thought, 'Can they do that?'"
She said that just before Christmas, about 10 members of the call centre team were fired and then a further seven were sacked. She left a number of months ago after feeling pressured into quitting.
"As they started bringing more and more in, they started firing people … They would have kept their jobs if it wasn't for the prison thing. "They'd passed their probation period, they'd been there for several months. They'd maintained the level they were – that had been perfectly acceptable at that point. Then they [got] these people in for nearly free."
She described the prisoners as "quite nice people" and said that some were very good workers, but added that the wage difference caused resentment. "Everyone was pretty miffed because at the end of the day there's no way you can compete [with £3 a day]."
A second female employee who has been on the dole for almost two months said she was also pushed out of Becoming Green despite meeting all of her performance targets. She declined to be named, worrying about the consequences for job hunting. "I'm currently on jobseeker's allowance because I can't find another job because of all of this happening," she said. A former manager at Becoming Green claimed the company had been creating "reasons to … justify dismissing people from the company so they could get more prison staff in".
"The whole idea of what the company is doing is bringing in free labour for the business and relieving their employed staff of their responsibilities, because obviously it is more cost-effective for the business to have criminals working for them than paying a salary to each person. "I left because I didn't like the way the company was being run," the former manager said. "If people are rubbish in their jobs then get rid of them, I understand that.
"But if people are coming in every day, and are generating a lot of revenue … and the next thing you know is their jobs are on the line, there's no reason why these people should have been fired. I don't think it is right, just to save a few a quid. These people have bills to pay."
The company has itself confirmed that staff had been dismissed since prisoners were taken on in November, but countered that this was part of the normal attrition rate in a demanding business where "targets had to be met".
Nicola Vaughan, senior manager at Becoming Green, said that there had been "performance issues" with staff who had been fired.
"There have been a few people who have been dismissed for various reasons … but if you are trying to imply that we have replaced those people with prisoners then that is far wrong," Vaughan said. "I think perhaps the people you have spoken to are a little little bit disgruntled … At the end of the day the contact centre industry has a very, very high turnover … it's tough."
In January, Clarke laid out plans to double the numbers of those working inside prisons to 20,000 in less than 10 years. However, while convicts working inside prison manufacturing goods have been doing such work for many years, prison campaigners said that working at a £3-a-day training rate for private businesses for a minimum of eight weeks outside of prison walls was a new phenomenon.
"This situation, I haven't heard of before," said Andrew Neilson, from the Howard League for Penal Reform.
"We do welcome these opportunities [for prisoners to work], but it should be on the same basis as anyone else in the community."
"We don't want the issue of prisoners on day-release being employed becoming one that divides people and effectively people are turned against those prisoners because they're seen to be taking people's jobs. That's not what should be happening."
Chris Bath, executive director of reformed offenders' charity Unlock, said he had never heard of such a practice where prisoners were spending so long in the private sector doing work experience on prison wages, and called the move a "worrying development".
Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA prison officers' union, said that for any company to rely on cheap labour of prisoners was "immoral and disgusting".
"The association wants to see prisoners working and leading law-abiding lives, but not at the expense of other workers being sacked or laid off to facilitate it.
"Some employers must be rubbing their hands and the shareholders laughing all the way to the bank," Gillan said.
"The ministers must be held to account if the factual position is this company has sacked workers to employ prisoners … The general public will be outraged if this proves to be widespread, and proper scrutiny of contracts needs to be made public to ensure public confidence."
The MoJ said that prisoners at the company who were being employed at above minimum wage were paying 40% of their salary into the victims' fund. Three of the prisoner employees were understood to be managers at the company.
Speaking about the expansion of prison work from 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners over the next decade, Clarke told the BBC last month: "It would be a very serious downside if we started replacing job opportunities for law-abiding people, and we've been conscious of that all the way through.
"Although we don't pay the prisoners the minimum wage, normally you can't start undercutting British businesses outside."
He added that the CBI was "totally supportive" of the work initiatives.
However, Clarke has not addressed the situation in open prisons, where inmates can still have months left on their sentences, but businesses can now pay them little more than a token wage for their labour.
A Prison Service spokesman said: "We want more prisoners to undertake challenging work, within the discipline of regular working hours, which will help them develop the skills they need to gain employment, reform, and turn away from crime." The spokesman added that prison work "helps to reduce the chance of re-offending by setting up appropriate employment and rehabilitation work in the community".
In a statement, Becoming Green said: "Corporations should have a social responsibility to help society. It feels that if they work with this attitude and behaviour it will help make a better society for all." The company added that this kind of work would "enable [prisoners] to resettle and integrate back into society and not feel the need to re-offend. By working, prisoners can repay the victims of crime rather than be unproductive in prison and by working potentially turn their lives around."
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So the fact that you can sack workers on one rate and employ almost slave labour in a much lower rate is not an incentive for a company whose sole aim is to maximise profits? Riiiiigggghhht!
SussexSocialist
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Minimum wages don't pay the rent
For America's lowest-paid workers, working full-time isn't enough.
There isn't a state in the country where it is possible to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent working 40 hours a week at minimum wage, according to a report on rent affordability. Even in Arkansas and West Virginia, which boast the nation's most affordable rent, a person with a minimum wage job would have to work 63 hours a week to rent a two-bedroom. In California, Maryland, Washington D.C., New Jersey and New York, a person would have to work at least 130 hours. In Hawaii, they'd have to work 175 hours. In New York, which is in the midst of a fight over raising the minimum wage, two individuals would need to work 68 hours a week each to manage the rent on a two-bedroom unit. If they have kids, the 70 percent of their paychecks left after rent won’t get them very far.
The federal minimum wage, which is $7.25, hasn't changed since 2009. During his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama promised to increas the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. In real terms, America's lowest-paid workers make less than they did in 1968. With an annual income of $15,080, a full-time minimum wage worker's salary is just under the 2012 federal poverty threshold of $15,130 for a family of two. It falls well below the poverty threshold for a family of three, which is $19,090.
Whenever raising taxes on the rich is brought up, the accusation of so-called class warfare is made, ignoring the real class warfare that has seen the rich get richer at the expense of the rest of us. Yet the working class continues to vote against their self-interests.
Source
There isn't a state in the country where it is possible to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent working 40 hours a week at minimum wage, according to a report on rent affordability. Even in Arkansas and West Virginia, which boast the nation's most affordable rent, a person with a minimum wage job would have to work 63 hours a week to rent a two-bedroom. In California, Maryland, Washington D.C., New Jersey and New York, a person would have to work at least 130 hours. In Hawaii, they'd have to work 175 hours. In New York, which is in the midst of a fight over raising the minimum wage, two individuals would need to work 68 hours a week each to manage the rent on a two-bedroom unit. If they have kids, the 70 percent of their paychecks left after rent won’t get them very far.
The federal minimum wage, which is $7.25, hasn't changed since 2009. During his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama promised to increas the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. In real terms, America's lowest-paid workers make less than they did in 1968. With an annual income of $15,080, a full-time minimum wage worker's salary is just under the 2012 federal poverty threshold of $15,130 for a family of two. It falls well below the poverty threshold for a family of three, which is $19,090.
Whenever raising taxes on the rich is brought up, the accusation of so-called class warfare is made, ignoring the real class warfare that has seen the rich get richer at the expense of the rest of us. Yet the working class continues to vote against their self-interests.
Source
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