Minimum wage airport workers at the NYC airports used the Martin Luther King Holiday to demonstrate for higher wages. The Daily News followed this with a series on how people are getting by with 2 or 3 jobs and little sleep. or not getting by. Believe me, these people deserve a higher wage.
$8.00 an hour generates gross income of $16,640 a year if you get 40 hours a week and that is below the poverty level for NYC. Meanwhile, the companies do their best to keep the hours lower to avoid things like heath insurance/vacation pay/sick day pay,
The cheapest apartment rental is probably at least $6,000 a year (and $500 a month may not be doable there) in the outer boroughs. Take away $1,414 a year in Social Security and Medicare, $1,320 a year in mass transit commuting, $2,400 a year for utilities (that may be low, I spend $12,000 a year on utilities in a 2 bedroom condo), and you are left with $5,506 for food, clothes, any health care expense, and any furniture replacements. $5,506 is $458.83 a month. That is $107 a week. You might be able to cover a food bill for a family of 3 with that, but nothing more and kids need clothes, furniture wears out and people get sick.
Some might say an unhappy individual should move away and look for another job. But that takes money and involves unemployment with no money coming in. How is such a transition to occur?
Some might say have the spouse work and then you have 2 minimum wages, but single parents are a reality in this society and 2 workers adds child care expenses to the mix and quite possibly something bigger than a 1 bedroom which increases the monthly rental. We are not talking about the luxury here.
Then, I read the following this morning:
"Ms. Yellen and Mr. Ackerlof also advanced what they called the “fair wage-effort hypothesis,” saying that workers who were paid what they regarded as less than a fair wage responded by doing a poorer job. That indicates that companies that hold wages down may suffer relative to those that offer better pay and working conditions. They pointed to, among other evidence,a 1987 article in The New York Times by Agis Salpukas that reported that some companies that had instituted dual-tier pay scales were dropping them, having found the system “produced a resentful class of workers who in some cases are taking their hostility out on customers.”
No wonder airport workers are surly and uncaring about the service provided. Think about that next time you are wondering where your luggage is or you are trying to rebook your flight after it has been cancelled.
Obviously, economic theory presents the case that people should shun these jobs and that will force wages higher. But there are people desperate for jobs and any income is better than no income. 1996 Welfare Reform makes that a a reality as does an eventual end of unemployment insurance. That is as it should be.
What is not as it should be is society being able to take advantage of desperation. Products and services should be priced to pay workers a livable wage. Yes, that may drive some remaining production overseas, but most of that production that was going to leave has already left, and some of it is even coming back. And that which is coming back does not pay minimum wages to its workers who are skilled factory workers for the most part. Many of these minimum wages are services jobs that require personnel to be here and now.
I think the minimum wage should be at least the poverty level of a locale. That means one minimum wage for NYC and another for rural areas of NY State.
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