Part One:
RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE IN RESTAURANTS COULD BE A WIN FOR EVERYONE.
We speak to Nicole Hallett, associate professor of law at the University of Buffalo. Most states’ minimum wage laws allow restaurants to pay their employees a below-minimum wage because their tips are expected to bring staff incomes above the miniimum line. New York has increased the minimum wage for waitstaff to $10/hour (still somewhat less than other employees’ minimum wage of $15/hour).
The restaurant industry has not suffered at all from this increase. In fact, it has thrived, as have tipped workers’ incomes. But the entire economy also benefits: When consumers have more money in their pockets, they can afford to purchase more goods and services – beyond barely making ends meet – which generates more income for non-essential industries like going out to dinner, retail purchases, appliances, etc.
Part Two:
THERE’S A NATIONAL LABOR UPRISING HAPPENING (AND THE MEDIA ISN’T REPORTING IT).
That’s the title of a Salon article written by our guest, Bob Hennelly, who has reported for the Village Voice, Pacifica Radio, WNYC, and CBS MoneyWatch. We note the recent increase in successful union strikes among teachers, auto workers, hospital workers and others. As economic circumstances have grown more dire for working people, many have recognized the power of union solidarity and, at the same time, have become more willing to take risks (perhaps because they believe they have less to lose).
Ever since Ronald Reagan broke the back of organized labor when he crushed the Air Traffic Controllers Union (PATCO), the labor movement has been in retreat. This allowed corporations to refuse to share any increases in worker productivity with their employees. Instead, they cynically got workers to accumulate much more consumer debt than they could afford to repay, forcing many families into bankruptcy and desperation.
At the same time, companies were looking to the global economy as a great opportunity to enrich their executives and shareholders. They dismantled plants, moved their jobs overseas, and then hid their growing profits in the Cayman Islands where the IRS was unable to collect their share of taxes.
Now that poverty and drug addiction have come to suburbia (as well as urban areas), the economic dislocation has been felt all across the U.S. It has expanded to the working poor — the millions of people who are living one paycheck away from falling below the poverty line. Schools lack the resources to help all the at-risk kids, whose families may have fallen victim to the opioid crisis, to job instability, mental illness, domestic violence, unaffordable health crises, or “merely” to dysfunctional family situations.
If the U.S. were a developing country, the IMF and World Bank would be telling us to get our act together by adopting severe austerity measures. For us, however, we will need to rely on unions and working people to raise everyone’s consciousness (as well as their own) and to come together to stop corruption and to build a more humane and egalitarian system.
