Debunking Minimum Wage Myths

Your tax dollars are subsidizing corporations that don’t pay emplotees a living wage. Robert Reich explains why raising the minimum wage is good business, and good for the economy.

Robert Reich website

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The Tipped Wage: Depending on ‘The Kindness of Strangers’

If you’re uncomfortable leaving a tip at a restaurant, there’s a good reason. The nominally-egalitarian United States adopted the custom of tipping during Reconstruction, when African Americans, newly-freed from bondage, filled many low-paying personal-service jobs. Tipping allowed employers to rationalize paying a pittance to servers, and allowed restaurant patrons to feel like the European aristocrats who initiated the custom. Even today, in the Nation’s Capital, while most workers get $13.25 an hour, restaurant owners can pay servers $3.89 an hour.

Americans calculate a restaurant tip as a percentage of the total meal bill, so the more expensive the menu, the greater the gratuities to servers. That’s why Washington DC’s high-end restaurant owners had no trouble finding employees to testify against a District of Columbia law mandating equal hourly wages for servers, despite the fact that DC voters had approved the measure in a referendum. The District Council voted 8 to 5 to overturn the will of the voters.

If DC voters want to ratify their referendum vote and end vulnerable restaurant workers’ dependence on “the kindness of strangers,” they’ll have a chance soon. Four of the council members who voted to repeal the fair wage law are up for re-election on November 6th.

Trump’s Driver Sues Him for 6 Years of Unpaid Overtime

Noel Cintron, Donald Trump’s personal driver for more than 25 years, says his boss didn’t pay him overtime and raised his salary only twice in 15 years, clawing back the second raise by cutting off his health benefits. Mr. Cintron is suing his former employer for the back wages.

More:

“Donald Trump’s former driver sues over unpaid wages,” Sabrina Siddiqui, The Guardian

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