Earlier this week the Port of Seattle Commission officially approved the airport minimum wage proposal I first wrote about here:
Minimum total compensation would start at 13.72 an hour in 2015, with a minimum cash wage of $11.22, and rise to $15.50 an hour in 2017, with a minimum cash wage of $13. In addition, airport workers would be guaranteed a minimum of 1 hour of paid leave for every 40 hours worked.
It only covers about 3,500 workers with access to restricted areas, and it’s certainly not as good as the $15 minimum wage approved last November by City of SeaTac voters (and still wending its way through the courts). But my guess is that had Alaska Airlines and its contractors agreed to something like this a year ago, there never would have been a $15 minimum wage initiative in SeaTac, and thus there likely wouldn’t have been a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. So thank you, Alaska Airlines, for the unintended consequences of your anti-labor intransigence!
Whatever. The Washington State Supreme Court has heard oral arguments, and should decide by the end of the year whether Sea-Tac Airport is exempt from the City of SeaTac’s voter approved $15 minimum wage ordinance. If the court rules in favor of the City of SeaTac, then all Sea-Tac Airport workers will immediate start earning a minimum of $15 an hour, and probably receive backpay to January 1. If the court rules in favor of Alaska and the other plaintiffs, well then I suppose the Port Commission’s new minimum wage (after years of claiming it lacked the legal authority to set a minimum wage) is better than a kick in the teeth, and a political victory in itself.
This is absolutely right. Progressivism has been, for whatever reason, a very self-restrained movement. The entire movement has, for far too long, made false assumptions about how collaborative their opposition is. The progressive movement needs to be punched in the nose very hard by their foes before they unite and fight. Large businesses, by denying labor an increased slice of the economic pie, have done an exceptional job of uniting the populist left by very deliberately and forcefully screwing workers.
That growing populism is one big reason why the Halbig case is such a huge win-win for the left. If subsidies are stripped for the majority of states, it will pour gasoline on an already growing populist movement. Republican governors will be faced with a no-win scenario: reinstate subsidies by establishing a state exchange, or hold the ideological line and damage Obamacare. A no-win scenario that ultimately boils down to: do you want to be beaten from the left or from the right?
And if subsidies are left in place, the ACA will continue to increase its enrollments. A successful policy will further entrench itself, and the notion that “government is the problem” will be fundamentally weakened in the public eye.
@1 Visualize a future in which some states (for convenience, let’s call them “Blue” states) have a $15 minimum wage, subsidized health insurance through state-run exchanges, and Medicaid benefits for the poor; and other states (we’ll call them “Red” states) have a $7.25 minimum wage, no exchanges or subsidies, and no Medicaid.
Let’s suppose, further, the “Blue” states have thriving economies with relatively high average household incomes, while “Red” states have stagnant economies, with sharp divides between rich and poor, and low household incomes for all but the property-owning class?
My question is, under this scenario, why would anyone live in Red states? I mean, what can you do in Arkansas, besides raise chickens for corporate masters? And to do that, you have to borrow $500,000 in order to make $15,000 a year as an “independent contractor” (formerly known as “tenant farmer”).
In a country where economic opportunities and incomes are polarized like that, why wouldn’t everyone — especially those lower on the income ladder — move to the “have” states? Wouldn’t you expect the “have not” states to depopulate?
If someone in Mississippi is making $7.25/hr. with no health insurance, and could make $15/hr. and get affordable health insurance by moving to Illinois, why wouldn’t we see an Okie-like line of migrating pickups and station wagons snaking north on the interstates from “Red” states to “Blue” states?
If the D.C. 3-judge panel’s ruling in Halbig stands, won’t that empty out the “Red” states, and leave them without workers? Much as what happened to Alabama’s farmers after that state’s legislators threw all the immigrant farmworkers out of their state.
@2 Also, so many of the red states are so damn hot and humid… with climate change models predicting they’ll get hotter yet. If Washington can figure out how to pay for our infrastructure, we’re in for a boom.
As a business traveler and a recreational traveler, I fly quite a bit. Years ago when traveling domestic or to Mexico or Canada I routinely chose the slightly more expensive Alaska Airlines over less expensive competitors because the level of service was routinely superior.
Around the time of the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crash I began to be more critical of Alaska. As information about their maintenance practices and outsourcing of their baggage handlers became available it seemed to me that paying a premium for Alaska was not as good a decision as it used to appear.
Now we have the issue of Alaska Airlines overtly and covertly opposing the will of the community for its citizens to earn a living wage.
And what else is happening?
Amazingly, there is but one hub in all of ‘Murica’ where airlines are aggressively competing for business:
Delta, Alaska Airlines Go to War Over Seattle
Per PSBJ of 30 June
Bottom line, Delta is moving into SeaTac because the higher than average wages of Washingtonians create a profitable market. Delta is seizing upon Alaska’s inability to distinguish itself as a premium carrier because Alaska’s management has bought into the race to the bottom mantra.
You’d think that at some point in over a decade Alaska’s management would wake up and smell the coffee.
Alaska made a very good business with the loyalty of Seattlites. They’re likely to lose their business if they don’t find a way to get it back. HINT Reversing course on paying a fair and living wage to Alaska’s workers is the first step
The Life Of An Arkansas Chicken Farmer
Mitchell and Karen Crutchfield of Lamar, Arkansas, tried to make a living by raising chickens for Tyson Corp. on a family farm. “In the 25 years that Karen and Mitchell raised poultry for Tyson, their compensation rate remained steady at under 5 cents per pound, yet they were required to continually make improvements to and modernize their facilities, keeping them in a constant state of debt. Last year, Tyson required the couple to install new computerized blackout houses, an update that would have cost upwards of $300,000. ‘They control what you do and we finally said no,’ Karen recalls. ‘At that point, the cost it would have taken to update would have been like buying the farm again.’ Tyson stopped sending chicks to the Crutchfields.” Faced with losing their farm to creditors, they turned to Farm Aid, who found them a local attorney to guide them through Chapter 12 bankruptcy proceedings “to save their home and farm.”
http://www.farmaid.org/site/ap.....t=13135015
Roger Rabbit Commentary: So there you have it. Twenty-five years of dirty backbreaking labor, and their reward for that is debt and bankruptcy. There are many more stories like this. Being an Arkansas chicken farmer is nothing more than indentured servitude.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that the big food firms pay their “independent contractor” chicken farmers less than 5 cents a pound for chickens, did you? What do whole uncooked Arkansas-raised chickens sell for in local grocery stores now? $1.49/lb.? Did you know the farmer gets less than 4% of that?
Arkansas has a “state-federal partnership” type of health exchange, and 89% of its enrollees qualify for subsidies. I don’t know how that would be impacted by Halbig if it stands, but at least the people there can (presently) get subsidized health insurance. What if that goes away? Who would want to be an Arkansas chicken farmer then?
@2: Shut up, Rabbit, I don’t want all those crackers moving here. :-)
@4 Alaska Airlines went on my “do not fly” list after their sloppy maintenance killed 88 innocent people. Replacing union baggage handlers with minimum-wage gang-bangers (with an attendant increase in baggage thefts) merely hardened my antipathy toward this airline. If they have money to attack the $15 minimum wage in court, then they have money that could be used to pay their employees a living wage. (We all know how expensive litigation is.) They won’t get my business.
@6 But if they move here, they won’t have to be crackers anymore. They can be middle class like us.
@6 and @8 My main concern is their gun culture. I think we can work out all the rest.
I have not purchased a Tyson factory chicken in over a decade.
Washingtonians have many good options to find locally humanely raised great tasting chicken. Emphasis is on taste.
Coco Chanel weeps.
An Arkansas chicken farmer is paid less for raising a ton of chickens than a West Virginia coal company gets for digging a ton of coal.
@10 I don’t buy Tyson chickens, either, or anything else from Tyson. But if you go to a KFC or buy a can of chicken noodle soup, that’s probably what you’re getting, just as it’s impossible to buy fast food french fries without buying potatoes from Simplot.
Don Tyson and J. R. Simplot used to be billionaires, but now they’re worth nothing. They’re dead, and you can’t take it with you.
@1 my dad worked as a manager in a spinning mill in southern New England, back when there used to be such things. His mill was the only non-unionized mill in the area – primarily because he treated his employees well. He told me that a union organizer once told him that the best union organizer is ‘management’ – in that management which screws employees usually ends up causing shops to unionize. Of course, this was back in the day before the Reagan Revolution, when there were not so many obstacles to unionizing.
Any way you slice it, minimum-wage labor is a tremendous bargain for employers.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mi.....ft-behind/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s long past time for Congress to raise the $7.25/hr. federal minimum wage, but Republican obstructionism is preventing action. Because GOP members of Congress refuse to do their job, many states and localities are taking action on their own. If you live in a GOP-dominated state where the $7.25 minimum still applies, my advice is — move.