Low Wage Workers And Clergy Walk To Riverside Church In Harlem
Read more at http://www.harlemworldmag.com/low-wage-workers-clergy-walk-riverside-church-harlem/#ltK1xf7irXyvg1Sm.99
News About the Low Wage Debate
Fast Food Workers: We Will Strike for Wages, Union
From The New York Daily News:
Fast food workers from across the boroughs skipped their shifts Wednesday and brought their beef to Sixth Ave. in Manhattan, promising another citywide walkout next week to highlight their growing frustration.
“The economy is so tough right now,” said Elizabeth Rene, a Kingsborough College student from Flatbush who has worked at multiple McDonald’s in the city since 2006, including the W. 28th St. store that served as the site for Wednesday’s rally.
“It’s really difficult,” she added. “I have experience. I’ve worked at other locations, and I’m still taking home $7.25 an hour after taxes.” Continue reading
The Faith and Justice Walk at Riverside Church, NY
All throughout history, clergy of all faiths and denominations have been deeply involved in the fight for civil rights and for fair and just treatment for all people.
Here in the United States, priests, ministers, rabbis and clergy of other faiths took part in — or supported — the lunch-counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, and later as they spread to South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi and all through the South.
Faith leaders of all stripes joined hands with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others as they marched on Washington, D.C., in 1963 and then through the streets of Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham where, in September 1963, four young black girls attending Sunday School were murdered when racists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church. Continue reading
Income Inequality is Theme for Film Festval
The Workers Unite Film Festival s opening in New York City with income inequality as a theme. A full schedule is available at the website here
Andrew Tilson, executive director, describes it: “Our focus this season is on income inequality and how workers by organizing and uniting into unions can fight back against this widening income gap. The Workers Unite Film Festival team has been hard at work previewing films, setting up new venues, organizing partnerships and building the best worker/labor film festival we can for our third season.
Our themes of equal pay for equal work for women, dignity and legal status for immigrant workers, a living wage for all, including fast-food workers and workplace rights and justice for every employed person every type, be they on a shop floor, driving a taxi or working in the old and deadly garment sweatshops of Bangladesh, or the new high-tech sweatshops of the social media industry.”
Minimum Wage Hike: Senate, No, Seattle, Maybe yes
This week has become pivotal for the minimum wage debate. Forces to improve the minimum wage descended on Washington as the U.S. Senate took up the issue, but Republicans blocked the bill. President Obama reacted quickly, click here, while Democrats now are seizing on making that divide an important part of midterm elections in November. Click here.
Meanwhile, in Seattle, the mayor and local officials are now moving towards a $15 minimum wage in the city. Click here. And on Friday, Hawaiian legislators moved to raise that state’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Click here.
While his predecessors did sign bills to increase minimum wages, one analysis stressed that President Obama lacks a Republican partner. Click here.
And a poll may explain that while 71 percent of those surveyes supported raising the minimum wage, many of those same people said it has little to do with their vote. Just 58 percent said they would punish someone electorally for opposing the minimum wage. Click here.
Still, the debate goes on –on the effects on workers, clearly, and on business. The New York Times editorialized that raising the rate is good for business, click here, while The Washington Post explored the split between big and small business reactions here.
Barriers to Escaping Poverty
New York Times reporter Steve Greenhouse discusses the difficulties of low-wage workers in getting sufficient hours, steady schedules and enough money to live.
Please See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/business/economy/low-wage-workers-finding-its-easier-to-fall-into-poverty-and-harder-to-get-out.html?_r=1 or click here
NYT Columnist: Minimum Wage, Maximum Outrage
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/opinion/minimum-wage-maximum-outrage.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
By Charles Blow, The New York Times
April 17, 2004
No one should ever endure the kind of economic humiliation that comes with working a full-time job and making a less-than-living wage.
There is dignity in all work, but that dignity grows dim when the checks are cashed and the coins are counted and still the bills rise higher than the wages.
Most people want to work. It is a basic human desire: to make a way, to provide for one’s self and one’s loved ones, to advance. It is that great hope of tomorrow, better and brighter, in which we can be happy and secure, able to sleep without hunger and wake without worry.
But it is easy to see how people can have that hope thrashed out of them, by having to wrestle with the most wrenching of questions: how to make do when you work for less than you can live on?
Click on the column
“Wage Theft” called Nickel-and-Diming
They Call it Wage Theft
Huffington Post column on a Fast Food Forward poll concerning work without pay:
Posted: 04/11/2014
Before she got fed up and quit last month, it wasn’t uncommon for Darenisha Mills to keep working after her shift ended at the McDonald’s in Pontiac, Mich., where she was a cashier.
“They’re asking you to clean the bathrooms, sweep the lobby, run the register,” the 26-year-old told The Huffington Post, “but they don’t pay you anything for the time you work over.”
The formal name for that is wage theft, which occurs when an employer withholds pay rightfully earned by an hourly worker.
How Much Would Higher Wages Cost Consumers?
There are disagreements about the answers, of course.
A study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center asked in 2005 by Amy Vassalotti about how will a proposed increase from $6.75 to $7.75 in the California minimum wage would impact the California economy?
This study assesses the potential economic implications for the private sector of an increase in the current California minimum wage. It finds that most establishments would face very modest cost increases, which entails only minor adjustments, if any, to the new minimum wage law. The study concludes that the cost increases to businesses are very modest, except in the accommodations and food services industry, which should be able to pass the cost increases on to consumers through price increases. Overall, the minimum wage increase should not affect the California economy negative ly, via loss of employment or business relocation out of the state.
In 2013, Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-OK, argued publicly a far different outcome as reported in the Huffington Post on Aug. 12.
By David Winograd, Huffington Post
Raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour could increase the price of a hamburger by about 438 percent, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) argued at a town hall meeting with constituents on Thursday, Think Progress reports.
“You guys wanna pay $20 for a hamburger at McDonald’s?” Mullin said. “If you wanna increase it, that’s great,” he added, “but what you’re gonna do is punish everybody along the way.”
WorkersWrite 