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Tag: minimum wage increase
Trump’s Labor Choice Is Not A Friend Of Workers

Trump’s Labor Choice Is Not A Friend Of Workers

Fast-food executive Andrew Puzder is a frenemy to his employees.

He’s gone out of his way to downplay the needs of his workforce. Primarily, this means those Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. workers who have joined the nationwide clamor to raise the minimum wage.

Puzder is President-elect Donald Trump’s selection for secretary of labor. Hold on to your paychecks, this could be a bumpy ride.

Raising the minimum wage, granting overtime pay, inconvenient questions about why so many burger flippers and french fry scoopers are also on public assistance — it all receives a dismissive wave from Puzder. Too much federal regulation, he says. Not good for business.

Given Puzder’s role as CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., this is to be expected, as were the shouts of dismay at his nomination.

One organizer (Kendall Fells) pressing to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 said Trump’s choice of Puzder was akin to “putting Bernie Madoff in charge of the Treasury.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, told the Wall Street Journal, “With Mr. Puzder, the fox is in the hen house.” She went on to say his nomination is “the greatest assault on workers that we have seen in a generation.”

A moment, please, amid the chaos of name-calling, lest we lose perspective on the complicated problems of low-wage workers and so many others who have a tenuous tether to middle-class status.

Going on four decades now, economic policy has consistently undermined wage earners in favor of pleasing corporate managers and Wall Street. The tools that have been used were widely discussed during the presidential campaign: the off-shoring of jobs, raiding pension funds, all to concentrate profits more in the hands of those at the top income brackets.

This shift basically occurred over the stretch of Puzder’s career. And it happened through the acts of Congress, the courts, state legislators and a press too eager to gulp down the spin that this was all market forces at work. Unions increasingly were seen as the bad guys, out of touch.

So when Puzder says that government needs to get out of the way of business, he finds ready ears to absorb the message. But he’s only telling a piece of the story. The dire situation that too many fast-food workers feel is not, as Puzder likes to posit, simply the work of over-regulation.

Consider the Fight for $15, raising the federal minimum wage. Fast food is where the most public of these battles has been fought, with regular protests outside America’s favorite golden arches and other venues.

The pressure would double the federal minimum wage, on the outset a seemingly an outrageous contention. Puzder has said the protesters might as well be demanding their own firing. He argues that the workers will price themselves out of a job, that bosses like him will merely find ways to offset the higher labor costs through automation, decreasing employment. And it’s true, as some restaurant jobs have been replaced by the efficiency of technology, like touch screens to order food.

But realize that we have also let the minimum wage stagnate for far too long. By some calculations, the minimum wage would be at about $21, had it been allowed to rise alongside productivity gains. That is $5 higher than what many people think is asking too much.

In more tempered writings, Puzder has indicated that he would be OK with a $9 federal minimum. Or perhaps something that eases the increased labor costs on owners over time, incremental increases. If he really gets honest, he’d have to also admit that estimates about how much cost would have to be passed onto customers is also a subject of much debate.

And states and cities have begun to raise their minimum wages, something that Puzder can’t roll back even if he is confirmed.

Despite what many people of solid middle-class status like to tell themselves, the plight of the low-wage workers whom Puzder employs, and often fights, affects you and your household. And not just if they get your order for extra ketchup correct as you go through the drive-thru.

They are connected to the slipping grasp on a chance at middle-class status that so many Americans feel viscerally. It is the anxiety that helped elect Trump.

Puzder was an early and loyal supporter to Trump. The offering of a cabinet post is his reward. The question that remains to be seen is how loyal he can be to yearnings of the American workforce.

Mary Sanchez: 816-234-4752, msanchez@kcstar.com, @msanchezcolumn

IMAGE: Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, departs after meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (R) at the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016.  REUTERS/Mike Segar/File PIcture

Trump Picks Opponent Of Higher Minimum Wage For Labor Department

Trump Picks Opponent Of Higher Minimum Wage For Labor Department

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump will name fast-food executive Andy Puzder to head the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a source familiar with the matter, in an appointment likely to antagonize organized labor.

Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc, which operates the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food chains, has been a vociferous critic of government regulation of the workplace.

Puzder frequently publishes commentary and gives television interviews in which he argues that higher minimum wages would hurt workers by forcing restaurants to close, and praises the benefits of automation in the fast-food industry.

Fast-food workers, who are largely not unionized, are engaged in a multi-year campaign known as the “Fight for $15,” which is supported by labor unions, to raise minimum wages to $15 per hour. They have had state-wide successes in New York and California and in cities and municipalities such as Seattle.

The selection of Puzder, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was expected to be announced soon, the source said. The Labor Department regulates wages, safety and discrimination in the workplace.

Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller, when asked on a daily briefing call about Puzder, did not address him directly but said there would be “additional cabinet information” released later on Thursday. Puzder declined to comment via a spokesman.

Republican Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in last month’s election by carrying swing states – and some traditionally Democratic states – in the U.S. Rust Belt after promising to create jobs and to review or cancel trade deals that he said were bad for workers.

During the election campaign, national labor leaders had urged their rank-and-file members to back Clinton, saying Trump’s appointments and policies would not align with his promises to workers.

Labor leaders have been girding for Trump to appoint pro-business regulators at the Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board, and to roll back key regulatory initiatives of the Obama administration such as a Labor Department rule granting overtime pay to more than 4 million salaried workers, both unionized and not unionized.

“He was talking a good game when he was running for president, as far as helping workers and leveling the playing field for them, but with the nominations he’s made it’s just the opposite,” Lee Saunders, president of the public employees union AFSCME, said.

Although just 11.1 percent of U.S. workers were represented by a union in 2015 – down from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year government statistics were kept – labor unions are a powerful force in Democratic politics. But union members’ support for Clinton at the election was lower than it had been for President Barack Obama four years ago.

About 51 percent of voters from union households backed Clinton, with 42 percent supporting Trump, a CNN exit poll showed. Obama won 58 percent of the same voters in his 2012 re-election win against Republican Mitt Romney.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said Trump’s promises to workers are “at stake” if he names Puzder to head the Labor Department.

Robert Cresanti, president of the International Franchise Association, an industry group, praised Puzder in a statement as an “exceptional choice” who would bring “business experience and policy acumen on so many issues impacting employers and employees.”

DISPUTE WITH UNION LEADER

Trump’s decision to pick Puzder comes as he is engaged in a Twitter dispute with the head of a local United Steelworkers union in Indiana.

United Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones, who represents workers at United Technologies Corp’s Carrier plant in Indianapolis, criticized Trump for inflating the number of jobs that would be saved by his intervention in the company’s decision to move some production to Mexico.

Trump responded on Twitter that Jones has done a “terrible job representing workers.”

Jones said after speaking to the company that 800 jobs will remain in Indianapolis and 730 of those will be union jobs, with another 70 management positions. But Trump said last week that a deal made by Indiana to give the company $7 million in tax breaks would keep 1,100 jobs in the region.

“Our people, at that point in time, got their hopes back up that they might have a job,” Jones told CNBC on Thursday. “I’ve said at every interview that I’m grateful for President-elect Trump getting involved … without his involvement these 800 jobs would not remain in Indianapolis.”

“All he had to do is come back and say I was misled by (United Technologies) … instead of doing that he goes on the attack on me?” Jones added. Jones has said some of the president-elect’s supporters sent him death threats.

Leo Gerard, head of the national United Steelworkers union, said during a Capitol Hill press conference that Jones was “simply clarifying” what most affected his local union members.

“As far I am concerned, Chuck Jones is a very effective local union president,” Gerard said.

When asked about Puzder, Gerard criticized the fast-food executive for speaking out against a higher minimum wage.

(Additional reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley, David Shepardson and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Alistair Bell and Frances Kerry)

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gestures as Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, departs after their meeting at the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Report: Minimum Wage Increases Are Not Killing Jobs

Report: Minimum Wage Increases Are Not Killing Jobs

Remember when the right was convinced that raising the minimum wage would lead to disastrous job losses, all because of a Congressional Budget Office report that suggested President Obama’s plan to do so would cost the country jobs? It turns out that states that have upped their minimum wage are actually doing much better than states that haven’t.

A Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) report released last week shows that in the 13 states that increased their minimum wage at the beginning of 2014, job growth was higher than in states that did not. Four states — Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island — had passed legislation to raise the minimum wage, while nine — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — automatically did so due to inflation. The CEPR used the average of employment levels from the last five months of 2013 and compared them to the data from the first five months of 2014 to determine the rate of employment growth.

All but one of those states (New Jersey) saw an increase in employment. The average change for these 13 states was +0.99 percent, while the states that did not raise their minimum wages only had an average change of +0.68 percent. Four (Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Florida) were in the top 10 states that had seen job growth, and nine saw growth above the median rate. New Jersey, however, is in the worst shape in the country, with an 0.56 percent decrease.

The report is an update on April figures from Goldman Sachs economists, which had also shown the benefits of raising the minimum wage. The author, Ben Wolcott, says the report doesn’t show that an increase necessarily creates jobs, but that it doesn’t have the negative effects on the economy that so many were concerned about.

“While this kind of simple exercise can’t establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases,” he wrote.

Washington, which currently has the highest minimum wage ($9.32), saw the largest increase in small-business jobs in the nation. Of the four states that upped their minimum wage this year, Connecticut’s largest jumps were in professional and business services, New York’s were in private and educational health services, and Rhode Island’s were in manufacturing in March. Though New Jersey saw a decrease in overall job growth, its largest increase in jobs was in leisure and hospitality.

Ten other states have passed laws raising their minimum wage this year, with Massachusetts’ move to $11 per hour being the highest increase in the country. The effect on the economy as a whole remains to be seen. A federal minimum-wage hike will most likely not pass in a Republican-controlled House.

But this report makes it pretty clear that not only does a minimum-wage increase not have a negative impact on job growth, but it might actually help workers and businesses. It’s going to be harder and harder for Republicans to come up with excuses not to do it.

Below is the CEPR’s chart comparing states based on changes in job growth

wolcott-2014-06-30_494

AFP Photo/ Scott Olson

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Minimum-Wage Hike Benefits The Nation, Especially Minorities

Minimum-Wage Hike Benefits The Nation, Especially Minorities

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as proposed in the Fair Minimum Wage Act, would increase the total combined wages of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians by $16.1 billion, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.

The report notes that if the Fair Minimum Wage Act were passed, 6 million workers would be lifted out of poverty – and 60 percent of them would be people of color. The reason is simple: despite making up only 32 percent of the total workforce, minorities represented 42 percent of minimum-wage workers in 2013.

As illustrated in the chart below, Hispanics would benefit the most from a wage hike, with an $8.5 billion total wage increase. Blacks closely follow, at $5.2 billion. Asians would receive a $2.4 billion increase.

CAP Chart

In addition to lifting millions of workers out of poverty, a minimum-wage hike would also reduce government spending, because fewer people would need to rely on safety-net programs like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). In total, the Center for American Progress’ report attributes $46 million in savings over 10 years if the minimum wage were increased.

Many lawmakers on the right explain their opposition to a minimum-wage increase by arguing that it would hurt small businesses unable to afford the higher costs, and would result in massive layoffs.

However, as 602 economists pointed out in an open letter to President Obama and congressional leaders, past increases in the federal minimum wage had “little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market.”

In fact, the economists – seven of whom are Nobel laureates – argue that raising the minimum wage could have a “small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front.”

Ultimately, raising the wage is both good policy and good politics. When, as the Center for American Progress reports, full-time minimum-wage earners make only $15,080 — $4,000 below the federal poverty line – a wage hike means helping those who need it most. And given Republicans’ desperate need to fix their image among minorities, raising the wage would also be a great political move for the GOP.

Photo: Pbarcas via Flickr
Chart via Center For American Progress