SANTORUM'S SWEATSHOP EXPANSION BILL

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M

Tuesday, March 08, 2005 16:58

 

 

SANTORUM'S SWEATSHOP EXPANSION BILL

 

http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/002263.shtml is source

url for the article below.

 

The American middle class is now under full assault!

 

Krugman analyzes this in this morning's NY Times (See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/opinion/08krugman.html?hp ) for

article.

 

The bankruptcy " reform " bill will leave millions of poor and

middle class Americans who go broke paying for medical or accident

expenses in debt peonage indefinitely.

 

People are furious about these doings to the degree that they are

aware. Republican politicians do anything to hide their direct

complicity in destroying our middle class.

 

For example, Issa is frantic to hide his role in destroying an

entire manufacturing sector in our economy (car alarm manufacturing)

and is trying (fat chance!) to intimidate me into silence about that

issue. Meantime, how about less pay for more work?

 

 

March 06, 2005

Santorum's Sweatshop Expansion Bill

Sweatshops Expanded, Overtime Attacked, and State Minimum Wage Laws

Undermined

 

This is as low as it goes, as the GOP fights to expand sub-minimum wage

sweatshops across the country. Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum is leading

the charge for a GOP bill that would ostensibly raise the minimum wage

by $1.10 per hour, but in reality would cut wages for millions of

American workers and expand unregulated sweatshops across the country.

 

As this Economic Policy Institute analysis details, the bill is a

trojan horse for assaulting workers rights.

 

Licensing Sweatshops: While a $1.10 per hour minimum wage increase by

itself would help 1.8 million workers, Santorum includes a poison bill

exempting any business with revenues of $1 million or less from

regulation -- raising the exemption from the current $500,000 level.

 

The upshot: while 1.2 million workers could qualify for a minimum wage

increase, another 6.8 million workers, who work in companies with

revenues between $500,000 and $1,000,000 per year, would lose their

current minimum wage protection.

 

And an even larger number of businesses, those with revenues under $7

million, would be exempt from fines under a range of other safety,

health, pension and other labor laws. Essentially, the realm of

unregulated sweatshops would be expanded and legalized under Santorum's

bill.

 

Killing Overtime: It gets worse-- the 40-hour work week would be

abolished and companies would not have to pay overtime if they cut

hours the next week. The proposal is called " flex time " , but workers

would have no say in the matter. Their hours could be rearranged,

upsetting child care and other weekly routines, and companies would no

longer have the deterrent of having to pay overtime as a way to

encourage giving workers a regular weekly schedule.

 

Banning State Minimum Wage Laws: But here's a kicker from a GOP

supposedly dedicated to states rights. Santorum's bill would ban states

from requiring employers to pay tipped workers with a guaranteed wage.

Employers could pay tipped workers nothing and force them to live off

tips, while states would be preempted from creating a higher wage

standard for tipped workers.

 

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act specifically guarantees states the

right to impose higher wage standards than the federal law. One area

where many states have a higher standard than federal law is for tipped

workers, who are guaranteed only $2.13 per hour in wages under federal

law and can be forced to credit their tips against the required federal

wage level. Many states have a higher minimum wage for tipped workers

or have abolished the so-called " tip credit " altogether and let workers

keep their tips, without allowing employers to reduce their salary

below the regular minimum wage level.

 

With Santorum's bill as law, you would end up with a situation where

small and even medium size restaurants and other businesses with tipped

employees would be exempt from the federal minimum wage, and state

governments would be barred from requiring employers to pay actual

wages to tipped workers. Essentially, those workers could be hired for

zero dollars and told they had to live only off tips, however little

those were.

 

The attack on the tip credit is bad enough, but the precedent of the

federal government creating a MAXIMUM standard for wage regulation and

restricting the right of states to create a higher standard is even

more dangerous. Because of federal inaction, states across the country

have raised their minimum wages -- Red State Florida raised theirs just

last fall and indexed it to inflation -- and many more are thinking

about it. (See the chart below)

 

If Santorum and the GOP can push through a restriction on states'

ability to raise standards for tipped workers, the next step could

easily be a restriction on states being allowed to have ANY minimum

wage higher than the federal level at all.

 

The City Minimum Wage Precedent: Sound too far-fetched even for

rightwing politicians? Well, after a number of cities began enacting

city minimum wage laws, about a dozen southern and western states,

including Florida, Louisiana and Georgia, passed legislation banning

local governments from enforcing local minimum wages higher than the

federal minimum wage level. Backed by the conservative American

Legislative Exchange Council, these " minimum wage repeal acts " are the

model for the national GOP going further and preempting state minimum

wage laws, just as they recently preempted state class action laws and

just as they have preemped state health care and environmental

regulation. (See this post today on the full range of conservative's

preempting progressive state laws).

 

Taking the fight to the states: Right now, there is an upsurge of

grassroots energy working to raise the minimum wage at the state level.

Despite the Florida legislature banning local minimum wage laws,

Florida voters last fall, by a vote of 72%, raised their overall

minimum wage by $1 per hour -- and raised the wage for tipped workers

by the same amount. Other states are raising the minimum wage far

higher than the federal level-- Washington State now has a $7.35 per

hour minimum wage, and San Francisco has a $8.62 per hour city minimum

wage.

 

The GOP now knows that it's not enough to just keep blocking minimum

wage increases at the federal level; they have to stomp on these new

state initatives as well. The Santorum bill is the first step in the

rightwing goal of not only restricting federal law but gutting the

ability of states to take action against sweatshops as well.

 

Pounding Santorum and the GOP: If progressives miss the opportunity to

smash this vote over the head of these rightwing politicians, they are

truly brain-dead. While voters are closely divided on a range of social

issues, even many normally Republican voters support raising the

minimum wage. It's the best wedge issue in the progressive arsenal, and

we get to skewer the GOP for hypocrisy on states rights to boot.

 

States raising minimum wage

 

Thanks to ACS Blog for the heads up.

Update: BTW- for those in who need a quick tutorial on minimum wage

economics and arguments, see these posts:

· Why Minimum Wage Beats EITC

· Popularity of Raising Min Wage to $8/hr

· How the Minimum Wage Increases Employment

· Who Pays for the Minimum Wage?

· Why Supposed Job Losses from Min Wage Don't Matter

· Politics of the Minimum Wage

Posted by Nathan at March 06, 2005 09:38 AM ! | TrackBack (4)

 

 

Mark Hull-Richter, U.S. Citizen & Patriot

U.S.A. - From democracy to kakistocracy in one fell coup.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-01.htm

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