When I woke up today to hear that thousands of fast food workers across the country walked out of their jobs to protest their pathetic wages and lack of benefits, my only thought was, “it’s about damn time.” It’s clear to anyone who has put in a hard day’s work at a job they absolutely needed that these people have been underpaid for quite some time. But, while I completely support the strike, I definitely was NOT looking forward to engaging in conversations with people about minimum wage, because the massive ignorance around the topic is annoying at best, and infuriating at worst. Many have formed staunch opinions against a wage increase, yet most simply don’t understand the factual realities about the topic. If more people took time to understand what it’s all about, people would come to a heartbreaking realization that far too many people in our society don’t talk about – the fact that raising the minimum wage is about morality, NOT economics.
That statement will surely offend economic students, finance professionals and Paul Krugman, but it’s the reality of our day. Whenever political pundits go on roundtable debates on TV to discuss raising the minimum wage, the argument always gets deeply embroiled in economic causation. The people who favor a wage bump argue that paying workers a living wage will allow many of them to come off public assistance which helps tax-payers. And when you put more money in the hands of people with little money, they spend it on necessary goods and services which also helps the economy.
The people against minimum wage believe that the government should not force corporations to increase their labor budgets in hard economic times, especially when the offset would mean people like us – aka the customers – will have to pay more for a Big Mac or a Whopper. Many also see this issue as wholly unimportant because pimply-faced teenagers don’t need to be making a living wage when they live at home with their parents. They will also argue that fast-food jobs are mostly just transitional opportunities that someone takes until they “find something better”, which completely negates the necessity of rage increases.
But now it’s time to cut through the bullshit. The minimum debate has little to do with complex economics, and a lot to do with greed. The main reason corporations don’t want to pay their employees a living wage is because the executives want to keep making as much money for themselves as possible. The AFL-CIO paywatch report revealed that CEOs now earn 331 times as much as AVERAGE workers and 774 times as much as minimum wage earners. Isn’t it interesting how we never address altering executive compensation, yet we stay telling poor people to be happy being poor? That’s not about economic stability, that’s simply GREED.
Big businesses like Wal-Mart and T-Mobile, notorious for underpaying employees and overpaying executives, have a firm belief that maintaining profit margins down to every last cent is far more important than their employees not having to work full-time while being on public assistance. They still fashion themselves as companies who give seemingly optionless people a chance at gainful employment, like when Wal-Mart decided to hire seniors as greeters and veterans as part-time employees. And the reason such pr schemes are successful at making their companies look better is because many are ignorant about who is truly affected by low wages.
The people making minimum wage are not old retirees looking to make an extra buck, or teenagers learning the value of hard work, or university students flipping burgers until they get their degree and step into a high-paying job (which is another BS ideology I’ll address on another day). The vast majority of minimum wage workers are adult women. Many have children, and their menial wages represent half of the families total income. We collectively need to stop framing this issue as putting more beer money in the hands of irresponsible teens and call it what it statically is: Giving low-income families an opportunity to make a fair wage. It’s not about giving these folks money to put spinners on their Range Rovers, it’s about paying a woman enough to buy food for her kids AND herself.
The truth is, companies like Papa John’s who believe in passing their employees wage and benefit increases on to their customers (usually done in a public manner aimed for us to shame their workers “greed“) are the real problem. The truth is, companies like McDonald’s, who posted great profits even at the height of the recession, are the real problem. These are not mom and pop shops being squeezed out of their pennies to give little Billy or young Renee an underserved raise. The truth is, these are multi-million dollar, multinational corporations that believe executive bonuses and maintaining excessive margins are more important than their workers being able to live decently. That is NOT an economic issue, it’s a MORAL one.
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.