If you are one of the thousands of people working a minimum wage job in this county this Labor Day weekend—from servers schlepping drinks and food at restaurants across San Diego to ice cream scoopers doling out cones to straggling, sunburned tourists; from the ticket takers at the air conditioned movie houses to the caregivers working in the nursing and healthcare industry—thank you for your service.
And give thanks you don’t live in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Show-Me state recently showed its low wage workers a significant bump in their paychecks, raising the minimum wage from $7.70 per hour to $10 in May. But in July the GOP legislature, lead by Gov. Eric Greitens, pulled a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sleight of hand that must have left workers and voters wondering what the heck just happened!?
In 2015 voters in St. Louis chose to see the minimum wage in their city increase from $7.70 to $10 by this year. But by the time summer rolled around state lawmakers decided nah, not going to happen. They passed their own law stipulating that municipalities were not allowed to provide a minimum wage higher than that of the state. Why? Because it is a job-killer and bad for business, they argued.
So, to be clear, voters in St. Louis decided they wanted the citizens and workers in that city to make more than the state’s paltry minimum wage and supported a law affecting only that city; but state representatives decided voters’ actions threatened business throughout the state so came up with a back end choke hold on St. Louis’ working class. Seems like a case of every vote counts except if the vote affects the bottom line.
That only weeks later the President of the United States travelled to that same state to discuss his vague tax plan to “bring back Main Street by reducing the crumbling burden on our companies and our workers” makes the episode all the more farcical.
Reducing the minimum wage certainly helps companies offset their cost of doing business but how taking money out of the pockets of people more likely to spend it than save it is good for Main Street is beyond my understanding.
In California where the state mandated minimum wage is $10 or $10.50 per hour depending on the number of employees and San Diego’s is $11.50 (Chula Vista and National City are at the state level) conclusive findings on the affects of higher wages are not widely available.
But something tells me that having those extra couple of bucks to spend makes life a little better for the people who need it as well as for the people who sell them goods and services.
So California minimum wage earners thanks for your service this Labor Day weekend and enjoy the paychecks while you can. It won’t be long before the drones, automatons, aggregators and bots have replaced us all so that someone’s bottom line can be a little bit blacker.
