By Bill Knight
Column, Nov 7, 2013
Like most Americans, I’ve worked minimum-wage jobs. As an adolescent and a young adult, I worked on a farm, in a grocery store, and for a carpenter, and co-workers weren’t all teens. A grouchy guy in his 40s who smoked unfiltered Camels and swung a hammer like it was a Stradivarius pounded nails alongside me; a single mom was head cashier, knew the supermarket better than the boss, and mothered bag boys as well as ran the register.... [T]he following seven facts about the minimum wage show that Congress is playing craps with people’s lives.
1. $15,080 is the annual income for a full-time employee working a year
at the federal minimum wage. The U.S. poverty level for two adults with one
child is $19,530.
...
3. 3 is the number of times Congress increased the minimum wage in the
past 30 years....
4. $10.55 is how much the federal minimum wage would be if it had just kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. (Instead, it’s $7.25...
5. 19 is the number of states (including the District of Columbia) that
have raised their minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25. Illinois’ is
now $8.25.
6. 10 is the number of states that annually increase their state
minimum to keep up with the rising cost of living. They’re Arizona, Colorado,
Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington,
according to the federal Labor Department, with minimum wages now ranging from $7.35 in Missouri to $9.19 in Washington.
7. 67 is the percentage of Americans who support gradually raising the
minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to at least $10 an hour, according to a 2010 poll.
...
“We know that paying employees good wages makes good sense for business,” said Costco CEO Craig Jelinek, who’s active with other employers in the Business for a Fair Minimum Wage advocacy group. “We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low. Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty. We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage.”
...
Copyright 2013 Bill Knight