Labor group demands California’s $20 minimum wage for fast food workers extend to all sectors
Labor group demands California’s $20 minimum wage for fast food workers extend to all sectors
A fair wage advocacy group is demanding that California’s new $20 minimum wage law for fast workers be extended to all sectors across the state.
The minimum wage was argued to be high enough to support an average employee’s needs. The idea that if you work full-time, you should be able to live. Food, shelter, etc.. The weird "just this sector deserves to earn at minimum a liveable wage" never sat right with me. It (the minimum wage) should apply to every working person.
I disagree. You should be able to live even with part time. We need UBI, not minimum wage. Minimum wage without UBI creates conditions for fastest displacement of the workers by machinery/technology/AI/outsourcing. UBI without minimum wage would create the opposite conditions.
We align pretty closely on this opinion, and I get downvoted for it too.
I would love to see every citizen's needs met, whether via UBI or something else and the minimum wage abolished. Then companies can pay their employees whatever they want, and the worker can make a choice whether or not to take it, because their health and shelter isn't on the line if they don't.
Don't feed the beast. Find a better source.
Won't the market pretty well extend the minimum wage? Not to disagree with the premise, but in Germany, for example, the union represents about 1/3 of workers, and whatever the union is able to negotiate basically becomes standard for all workers. Why? Because people will gravitate to those jobs with a protected floor.
If in 6 months wages in other sectors don't follow, then the workers will drain toward fast food and the other industries will have to be competitive.
But yes, I don't see why the law is discriminating here. Just raise the whole minimum wage.
The law discriminated because it was harder to pass a broad wage bill, and they are indeed expecting wages to follow fast food. This bill will do almost as much good, eventually, and was much more feasible to get made into law.
That said, there's no reason to not fight for a broader bill, now. Everyone deserves this as law, not just market consequences, even if those market consequences should result in a similar thing.