ZING!

[Adam]

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[Gingersnap]

LOL! That's pretty good!

What would be better is if lawmakers understood the reality of minimum wage. I would only hire at the minimum wage if I had a dead simple job and I was willing to train a worker innocent of employment (or innocent of employment that didn't involve babysitting). After 90 days of showing up on time, doing the job to my specifications, and being a decent sort of person to work around, I'd raise their wage and try them on more responsible tasks.

If I had an employee who barely showed on time, barely did the work, and was barely okay to work with, I would let them go if the wage increased and I'd shuffle the work around. That's the small business reality. Chronic minimum wage-workers in non-food jobs are the most expendable people in the job market. You can get another one identical to the one you've got in 6 hours. If they aren't worth paying more, they aren't worth paying a higher mandated wage.

It's easier to cut them and curtail something else. Or it adds impetus to the idea of automating low-input tasks. Contract out the janitorial stuff, beef-up your website, automate more of your customer contact issues, hire the high school son or daughter of your current staff to run errands or babysit the phones on weekends.

[phillygirl]

What Ginger said. Even our unpaid interns got paid more than minimum wage.

[scott]

Union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. This is not a policy meant to help the working poor.

[Adam]

Union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. This is not a policy meant to help the working poor.

Yep.

Anyone else notice that union contract negotiations never go on when they're talking about the minimum wage?

[Norm dePlume]

Union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. This is not a policy meant to help the working poor.

Yeah, some of them mandate starting wages as much as fifty cents above minimum wage. Wooh-hoo.

Correction: some mandate 15% above minimum, which would be $1.50/hr over at the proposed $10/hr.

[Gingersnap]

Well, in non-union land, your highest paid employee is not tied to your lowest paid employee and for good reason. Not all entry jobs are the same although some of them pay the same for a minute. A lot of car sales people have had a job washing and moving cars. This used to be known as 'shagging' cars but the unfortunate Brit usage of that word means a more awkward description today.

It's a no-skill job. You rinse cars off and dry them every few days, you move them around the lot, you pick up any trash, and you wash cars before customer delivery. There is no skill here to develop. Despite that, some shaggers go into customer service, detailing, parts sales/delivery, or car sales. Or they quit when school starts.

No one expects that this is a career. You don't do this kind of work for years; it's not your profession. It's a potential entry job or it's an after school/summer job.

If so few people were willing to do this job that the market responded (and it would, no one likes a filthy car), then it would pay more than the minimum wage.

[scott]

Yeah, some of them mandate starting wages as much as fifty cents above minimum wage. Wooh-hoo.

Correction: some mandate 15% above minimum, which would be $1.50/hr over at the proposed $10/hr.

Is $24K considered poverty?

[scott]

Well, in non-union land, your highest paid employee is not tied to your lowest paid employee and for good reason. Not all entry jobs are the same although some of them pay the same for a minute. A lot of car sales people have had a job washing and moving cars. This used to be known as 'shagging' cars but the unfortunate Brit usage of that word means a more awkward description today.

It's a no-skill job. You rinse cars off and dry them every few days, you move them around the lot, you pick up any trash, and you wash cars before customer delivery. There is no skill here to develop. Despite that, some shaggers go into customer service, detailing, parts sales/delivery, or car sales. Or they quit when school starts.

No one expects that this is a career. You don't do this kind of work for years; it's not your profession. It's a potential entry job or it's an after school/summer job.

If so few people were willing to do this job that the market responded (and it would, no one likes a filthy car), then it would pay more than the minimum wage.

Teenagers used to be paid minimum wage to sweep parking lots. Those jobs are mostly gone because businesses either hire a service with a big machine or they take someone off of customer service for an hour and have them do it. They end up with somewhat dirty parking lots most of the time and there aren't many opportunities for low-skilled teenagers.


Good job folks.

[Norm dePlume]

Is $24K considered poverty?

I'm not really up on the poverty definition, but I believe it depends on how many dependents.

But nothing at the very anti-union site that I linked to says that $35/hr union guys would get a raise triggered by a minimum wage increase, and they apparently went looking.

[Norm dePlume]

Is $24K considered poverty?

I do think it's in the neighborhood of "working poor" though.

Union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. This is not a policy meant to help the working poor.

[Lanie]

Teenagers used to be paid minimum wage to sweep parking lots. Those jobs are mostly gone because businesses either hire a service with a big machine or they take someone off of customer service for an hour and have them do it. They end up with somewhat dirty parking lots most of the time and there aren't many opportunities for low-skilled teenagers.


Good job folks.

Do you believe that we should put a lot of effort into presenting opportunities for people who tend to quit a few months after being hired?

[Adam]

Do you believe that we should put a lot of effort into presenting opportunities for people who tend to quit a few months after being hired?

Sure. Seasonal work has been the backbone of teenage employment for many, many moons. Most people in this country don't need their grass mowed in February, nor are those folks needed at things like carnivals or amusement parks during the winter. Places like Disney are the exception, and even then, they hire on seasonal staff in the summertime.

Seasonal (usually summer) work goes a very, VERY long way toward teaching teenagers what it's like to have to actually get up with the alarm, get their shit straight, and get to a job. They find out that jobs aren't like school, that there are specific responsibilities, that other people actually depend upon them being there or the whole system falls apart. It teaches teenagers things like saving (usually for a goal), budgeting, what it means to pay taxes (no wonder the Left isn't interested in teenagers having jobs in the summer!), banking, general responsibility for their well-being, how to network in the workplace, how to deal with a boss, hoe not to deal with a boss, how to deal with a customer, how not to deal with a customer... the list of life-skills taught in a summer job is virtually non-ending.

[scott]

I'm not really up on the poverty definition, but I believe it depends on how many dependents.

But nothing at the very anti-union site that I linked to says that $35/hr union guys would get a raise triggered by a minimum wage increase, and they apparently went looking.

Are those goalposts heavy?

$24K is not poverty unless one person is supporting a family of 5 or more. I never made any claim about anyone making $35 an hour. I made the claim that union contracts are tied to the minimum wage and that this policy is not about about helping the working poor.

[scott]

Do you believe that we should put a lot of effort into presenting opportunities for people who tend to quit a few months after being hired?

No, the government should just get out of the way and stop demanding that pay for all jobs be high enough for someone to fully support themselves in a sustainable manner since not all people need that.

You don't help anyone by arbitrarily pricing low skill jobs out of the market.