In December of 2000, I wrote:
It is high time the Legislature enacts a higher minimum wage for the state. The current federal minimum wage of $5.15 is not enough for a single adult to live on. With the cost of rent being $300 or more (in most cases) plus utilities not to mention food, a person's salary is gone, and you haven't even added insurance, phone, cable, car or emergency expenses. Further, if the single person is a single mom, matters are even worse, as they are if this worker is married and the only wage earner.What I would suggest is raising the minimum wage in the state for those 18 and over, but allow those younger to be paid a training wage equal to federal standards for those employees. This would mean that those students would receive $5.15 an hour unless an employer has a federal exemption to pay them less. If job performance warrants, they can earn more.
I would also suggest that the wages for those earning tips also be increased from the current federal minimum $2.13.
Today, in 2006 minimum wages are still at 5.15 per hour. That minimum wage is a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage. A full-time worker at minimum wage makes just $10,712 a year — less than $900 a month — to cover housing, food, health care, transportation and other expenses.
Since 1997, Congress has taken eight (8) pay raises, while denying fair pay for minimum wage workers. On Jan. 1 (2006), congressional pay quietly rose to $165,200 — up $31,600 since 1997. And unlike minimum wage workers, members of Congress have good health benefits, pensions and perks.
It is immoral that workers who put food on our table can't afford food for their own. Immoral again that the minimum wage keeps people in poverty instead of out of poverty.
In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
"It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis — getting part-time income. We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life."
Today the value of the minimum wage is lower than it was in the 1950s and '60s. At $5.15 an hour, today's minimum wage is nearly $4 less than it was in 1968, when it reached its historic high of $9.09 (adjusted for inflation).
A low minimum wage allows miserly employers to pay poverty wages to a growing share of the workforce — not just workers at the minimum, but above it as well. (At $7 per hour a person only makes $14,500 per year, based on 40 hours per week. At the same time in 2004, the Federal Poverty Levels were $15,670, $18,850 and $22,030 for families of three, four and five, respectively.) In its 2005 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that 40 percent of the adults requesting emergency food assistance were employed, as were 15 percent of the homeless.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - gypsyman
It's like I thought, proportionately people earning minimum wage are in the same situation all over.
The irony is up here people on welfare are given assistance for prescription drugs, glasses and dental care, which they otherwise wouldn't have covered. Even though the actual check is not even subsistence living, when those benefits are added in, there remains very little incentive to go off welfare for a minimum wage job.
Since that's all most people who come off welfare are liable to get (that may sound pejorative but it's unfortunately true due to lack of skills, education, and training) our government has actually taken some positive steps towards taking care of this problem. First has been gradually increasing the minimum wage over three years, second has been allowing people to keep their welfare medical benefits for the first three months of any new full time job they take in a ca lander year. In theory after three months employee benefit programs will kick in to pick up the slack. In practise, well how many minimum and low paying jobs do you know that have dental, prescription drugs, and glasses benefits.
If we want the working poor to be able to survive, and for people to get off welfare, we need to give them real incentive. Whether proper training programs and education while on the assistance so they can get better paying jobs, or make entry level jobs better paying. By having separate rates of pay based on age, you're able to differentiate between those looking for spending money and those trying to feed a family, usually.
It's hard though, because you don't want to drive the mom and pop stores out of business by making it impossible for them to hire an employee or two, and than have to raise their prices etc. Reality bite, but there has to be a balance somewhere.
gyspyman.
2 - Dave Nalle
Kevin, have you looked into the proportion of the population in Kansas who actually earn minimum wage? Unless it's radically different from the rest of the country the result of some research will be that no one actually gets paid $5.15 an hour. In most of the country the real minimum wage - the least you can actually find a starting job paying - is around $7 per hour. So the fact is that the minimum wage as it now exists is meaningless.
Dave
3 - Kevin Surbaugh
Dave -
My company starts people off at 5.15. It is only fast food that starts higher, and then there are exceptions.
Of course, I still believe that the middle-class teenagers under 18, should be paid a training wage to start rather then minimum wage as I wrote in 200.
4 - Dave Nalle
What kind of company is it? I've been working with fast food and retail sales clerk positions as my baseline for salaries. What kind of job pays less?
Dave
5 - Kevin Surbaugh
Dave- My company is a retail grocery and as I said I know some fast food places especially mom and pop place's that pay minimum wage. Even a few McD's while most of them (the McD's) do advertise higher wages.
In Oklahoma where my company is now headquartered, which just finished merging with, is all union. In Kansas this company, which was another one till Jan 1, was not unless you were in the meat department. The new company is still evaluating pay raises, starting with those due since October, but had been frozen, due to lack of money.
6 - Maurice
I live in Idaho which is a Right to Work state. My daughter is 23 years old with a high schoool education. She has had 3 jobs in the last 6 months. Her lowest paying job was $11/hour at the $1 store.
I don't think the minimum wage needs to increase. People need to be educated about the opportunities available.
7 - Dave Nalle
Kevin, those wages are extraordinarily low. According to the BLS they don't exist in Kansas or anywhere else for retail grocery jobs, except for bagger jobs for underage kids. Someone ought to tell the BLS about this regionalized depression.
dave
8 - Scott
Well, if the minimum is indeed meaningless, what's the harm in raising it?
9 - Dave Nalle
What's the harm, but what's the point? I say get rid of it alltogether, along with all the other pointless and unnecessary laws.
Dave
10 - Scott
The point, I think, is to at least give a floor to start out on. I think we both know that if there was no minimum wage, there would be a slew of companies looking to hire folks for dirt cheap wages.
11 - RedTard
I've got a great idea. If we raise the minimum wage to $100/hour then we will all be rich, right?
Lets have freedom to choose to work at an agreeable wage. Leave minimum wage alone and let competition determine wages.
12 - Dave Nalle
Scott, anything under about $12 is dirt cheap. Right now we have a labor shortage in most parts of this country and it's only going to get worse. That means that the real base wage is only going to rise, and they would certainly never find anyone to work at below the legal or the natural minimum.
Dave
13 - Scott
So, you have no problem with raising the minimum then, right? It surely affects some people at least...
14 - Andy Marsh
minimun wage is a state issue, not a federal issue.
15 - Kevin Surbaugh
Maurice, I have never made $11/hr in my life. The highest was 9.14/hr. The lowest was 4.25 when minimum wage was that low and I was in my early 20's. I know of several McD's in Topeka, KS where managers would pay minimum wage to someone who has never worked food service no mater how old they are. I know several people that work in my store at minimum wage that are in their late 20's or 30's. I spent 5 years with the company before leaving to spend 2 years as full time volunteer with the ministry of Jesus People and another 2 years for a small IGA, before returning to the company at $7/hr. Fact is, Dave, people are out there being screwed by companies that think they can get away with it. That is why those companies also have high turnover. They are the perfect arguement for minimum wage and for unions.
16 - Luke
I get 21.50/hr, if I convert that into US$ it's about 16.12/hr, and I'm only 24, so I'm way ahead.
17 - Dave Nalle
Andy, you wrote 'is' when you meant 'should be'.
And Kevin, you get what you pay for. If they're having high turnover they provide worse service and will drive away customers and thus lose money. The companies that screw the worker at a wage level where there are lots of other jobs available ultimately just screw themselves, because the moment the job becomes a pain in the ass those workers just leave for a job with higher pay. I've seen this happen again and again in the grocery industry where a low paying company like Safeway will drive workers away, thus raising its overhead because of incompetent and inexperienced workers, then having to raise prices, and ending up uncompetitive and beaten out by smarter competition who pay more and get better workers as a result.
Dave
18 - Kevin Surbaugh
companies like Wal-Mart who pay minimum wage, have high turn over and screw their employees all they can...they just lost their second court case over wages and overtime in the last 7 years..maybe thats third...I deffintly remember 2....and yet they are the #1 retailer because they screw people....the other companies are trying to be like thm so they can beat them.
19 - Dave Nalle
I do have nationwide stats for WalMart, and nowhere in the US do they pay minimum wage.
They screw people in other ways, such as not providing health insurance, hiring two part timers instead of one full timer, not allowing any overtime, etc. But again, workers know how WalMart operates going in there and could certainly take a job somewhere else instead. The same skills that will get you $8.50 starting at WalMart will get you $7 at a company which treats you decently.
Dave
20 - Kevin Surbaugh
tell that to those people who are making minimum wage at wally world. Tell that to those making less then 8.50 working at the greedy wanna be monoply. Since Sam's kids have died, the place and treatment of employees has just got worse.
And many of the people really don't know how bad they will treat them, until after they are hired. Take a look around wal-mart, these people with multiple piercings and tattoos in general are not people that listen to or read the news on a regular basis. At some wally worlds these people, who would never be allowed to work with all those earrings in at other places, make up better then 50% of the employees.
21 - Jawahar Mundlapati
ESOPs are viable even for state and local government staff.
I believe every worker should demand for ESOPs from the employer.
22 - Kevin Surbaugh
should be since Sam has died
23 - Maurice
Geez, Kevin. What world do you live in? Piercings and tattoos are pretty common these days. Do you have a built in prejudice?
BTW Idaho is commonly listed as one of the lowest wage states. Where do you live? What does your local $1 store pay?
24 - Kevin Surbaugh
Maurice-
Not at all. Many retail places, have in their handbooks no ear peircings for guys, no eyebrow piercings, nose piercings, or tounge piercings are to be worn by anyone while on duty. Heck to my dismay, my company still says no facial hair, except well trimmed mustaches. All I was saying, is that you go into many wal-marts and many of the employees, especially the guys, look like they belong at a punk concert, rather then at work in a retail store. Part of that of course is because wally world has no uniform and apparently no dress code.
25 - Kevin Surbaugh
Maurice -
Oh I forgot, to answer your question, I live in Kansas.