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Tag: fair wages
Protestors demand fair wages in Minneapolis, MN.

To Fix The Labor Shortage, Start With The Wage Shortage

A recent newspaper article had an astonishing headline: "Labor shortages end when wages rise."

Gosh, Captain Obvious, what an amazing discovery! Someone notify the Nobel Prize committee, for this revolutionary revelation about How-Things-Work surely will win this year's prize in economics. Better yet, someone notify Sen. Mitch McConnell and that whole gaggle of Republican governors whose theory of labor economics begins and ends with the medieval demand that workers be whacked with a stick to make them do what the bosses want.

At issue is the furious complaint by restaurant chains, nursing homes, call centers, Big Ag, and other low-wage employers that they have a critical labor shortage. It seems that millions of workers today are hesitant to take jobs because there's no affordable child care, or the jobs they're offered expose them and their families to illness and death from COVID-19, or the work itself is abusive and demeaning... or all of the above.

Business chieftains wail that, with the economy reopening, they've been advertising thousands of jobs for waiters, nursing assistants, poultry workers, and such, but they can't get enough takers. So, the Congress critters and governors who obsequiously serve the corporate powers have rushed to their rescue. Shouting, "Whack 'em with a stick!" these mingy politicians are stripping away jobless benefits for America's workers, trying to leave them with no choice but to take any crappy job they're offered. It gives new meaning to the term "workforce."

In fact, the bosses themselves already have an honest way to get the workers they need without calling in government muscle: Offer fair wages! As the owner of a small chain of restaurants in Atlanta notes, the struggle to find the staff he needs suddenly turned easy when he stopped lowballing wages, going from $8 to $15 an hour. Not only did he get the workers he needed, but he says, "We started to get a better quality of applicants." That translated to better service, happier customers, and more business.

The real economic factor in play here is not wages; it's value. If you treat employees as cheap, then that's what you'll get. But if you view them as valuable assets, then that's what they'll be — and you'll all be better off.

At a recent congressional hearing on America's so-called labor shortage that corporate bosses have been wailing about, mega-banker Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, offered this insight: "People actually have a lot of money, and they don't particularly feel like going back to work."

Uh... Jamie... a lot of money? Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, and since COVID-19 hit, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, savings and even homes. So, they're not exactly lolly-gagging around the house, counting their cash.

Instead of listening to the uber-rich class ignorance of Dimon (who pocketed $35 million last year), Congress ought to be listening to actual workers explaining why they're not rushing back to the jobs being offered by restaurant chains and poultry factories. They would point out that there is no labor shortage; there's a wage shortage.

More fundamentally, there's a fairness shortage. It was not lost on restaurant workers, for example, that while millions of them were jobless last year, their corporate CEOs were grabbing millions, buying yachts, and living large. Yet more than half of laid-off restaurant workers couldn't get unemployment benefits because their wages had been too low to qualify. Then there's the high risk of COVID-19 exposure for restaurant employees, an appalling level of sexual harassment in their workplace, and demeaning treatment from abusive bosses and customers.

No surprise, then, that more than half of employees said in a recent survey that they're not going back to those jobs. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked!

So rather than demanding that government officials force workers to return to the old exploitative system, corporate giants should try the free-enterprise solution right at their fingertips: Raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect. Create a place where people want to work!

For a straightforward view from workers themselves, go to the advocacy group, OneFairWage.site.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Hillary Clinton Touts Family Issues And Hints At 2016 Domestic Agenda

Hillary Clinton Touts Family Issues And Hints At 2016 Domestic Agenda

By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton joined some of the most powerful women in Congress on Thursday to push for advances on affordable child care, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage that could create greater economic progress for women.

Clinton, fresh off her campaign-style weekend visit to Iowa and her summer-long book tour, used Thursday’s panel at the Center for American Progress to focus on issues that could form part of her domestic agenda should she run for president in 2016.

Clinton noted that women hold two-thirds of the minimum wage jobs across the country and three-quarters of the jobs that depend primarily on tips — meaning that many of them are working full time but hovering at or below the poverty line.

“We talk about a glass ceiling,” said Clinton, who ended her 2008 campaign by proclaiming that she and her supporters had put 18 million cracks in it. “The floor is collapsing.
“These women don’t even have a secure floor under them.”

The former New York senator and secretary of state noted that she had just read a Bloomberg story listing eight things in a new poverty report that “will make women mad.” Although there was a slight improvement in America’s poverty rate, she said, “for women there’s a lot less to cheer about.”

“Gender inequality in the workforce remains a reality; we ticked up from 70 cents on the dollar for women, versus men in the work force, to 78 cents; and we know that women are more likely to be impoverished even if they are working,” Clinton said.

She praised her colleagues on the panel — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut –for pursuing policy changes to give women “a fair shot.” (Pelosi and Clinton engaged in some good-natured sparring over whether California or New York was more progressive on women’s issues, with Pelosi touting the recent 10th anniversary of paid family leave in California).

The panel was led by the center’s president, Neera Tanden, who introduced Clinton by noting that Clinton’s “flexibility” as a boss when Tanden worked for her had allowed Tanden to balance a demanding job and raising young children. Clinton’s former congressional colleagues all spoke with frustration throughout the panel about how Democratic efforts to raise the minimum wage and expand paid family leave have stalled in Congress.

Joining the panel was Shawnta Jones of Maryland, who emphasized the importance of subsidized health care after she became a teen mother at 17, and Rhiannon Broschat, a 25-year-old Chicago retail worker who said she lost her job at Whole Foods after she had to leave work early to pick up her son on a day when his school closed in a weather emergency.

The most animated speaker was Gillibrand, who condemned opposition to expanding paid family leave across the country.

“We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have paid leave,” Gillibrand said, her voice rising in indignation. “Pakistan and Afghanistan, which don’t even educate their girls, have more paid leave than America. That is outrageous.”

Clinton noted that the economy has not fully recovered from the 2008 crash, though she praised her onetime rival President Barack Obama for “getting us out of the ditch we were in.”

Clinton, who has said she will announce her own plans next year, issued a call to arms to women in the looming 2014 midterm elections. “Political candidates and officeholders do pay attention when people vote on issues that are of concern to them,” she said. “When we can turn an issue into a political movement that demands people be responsive during the election season, it carries over.

“These issue have to be in the lifeblood of this election and any election,” she said. “The more we can do that — harnessing 6 million, or however many we can … bus tours, storming the gates…. Whatever it’s going to take.”

AFP Photo/Oliver Lang

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