Re: Federal Minimum Wage

cool40 December 9th 2013, 12:30 am

TravisRice wrote:
Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr
Unions only make up 11% of the work force .............. That puts a lot of fellows on this board in the other 89% which excepts no blame for whats going on? Go ahead and strip the workers like the elected members of the Government did in Wisconsin........ now who we got to blame ?

Getting really tired of seeing the union card being played ............ We got a saying around here, there are three kind of people , Union, Non-Union and Anti-Union. I work with as many good non-union guys as I do union guys on a daily basis. I have no problem with them as they are no different than I am and they have no problem with me either. I am gonna go out on a limb and say your probably in the third group based on the comments.

I'll leave it at that.

GT300TD December 9th 2013, 12:38 am

supervel45 wrote:
GT300TD wrote: And some of the workers are forced by walmart to work parttime so 'chinamart' won't have to pay full time benefits. walmart is the largest company of it's type in the world and have long time been known for it's mistreatment of it's employees. No walmart shouldn't be commended, but rather condemned for the way they treat their employees. The ONLY way they deserve to be commended is if they would spread some of their billion dollar earnings to the ones that earn it for them.
I think you might be missing some of the bigger picture here. Walmart is a small fish in a big sea, of what we are discussing. Walmart did not open up trade with China and elsewhere. Walmart probably does not knowingly hire to many under the table worker's either, the press would have a field day with it, if they got caught. They are a biggest chain outlet now. KMart and Target used to be. They payed about the same and hired alot of part time workers with few benifits also. Like I said before most of these jobs were filled by high school and colledge kids not long ago. Alot of housewilves used to work there part time in the 70's and 80's, when married women with children, hit the work force in enerst. What has changed is alot of the mainline middle class manufacturing and other middle paying jobs are gone now, or hard to come by. Walmart is what is left in alot of places, espicially small towns. One thing Walmart did do, is put alot of smaller companies out of business. Right or wrong, if they followed the law, that is part of Free Enterprize. If you don't agree with the Law, you cannot blame Walmart in this instance, maybe their lobbyists. I don't care for them, because they sell alot of junk, and their service is not that great. It is not the rank file employee's fault, it is a management and company struture, issue. They are definitely in business for the maximun abomt of profit, like all corporations now. Walmart does make a good diversion, form the root of the problem though.

Thanks...knowledge is a wonderful thing Smile

.

Curt December 9th 2013, 12:56 am

TravisRice wrote:
Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr
Unions only make up 11% of the work force .............. That puts a lot of fellows on this board in the other 89% which excepts no blame for whats going on? Go ahead and strip the workers like the elected members of the Government did in Wisconsin........ now who we got to blame ?

Getting really tired of seeing the union card being played ............ We got a saying around here, there are three kind of people , Union, Non-Union and Anti-Union. I work with as many good non-union guys as I do union guys on a daily basis. I have no problem with them as they are no different than I am and they have no problem with me either. I am gonna go out on a limb and say your probably in the third group based on the comments.

I'll leave it at that.

I am anti union, and very much so. I have the right to be so. It was the union who formed protest in areas where there aren't any Walmart stores, not with Walmart employees, but union employees and community organizers. LINK HERE, AND HERE And it is the union that is trying to drive the minimum wage up to $15/hr. Although the unions only make up about 10% of the workforce, they play a very large part in progressive politics. I don't believe anyone that works for a man should be able to tell him how much he's going to pay them. And then force their hand with gangster tactics. My very best friend is a union guy. Doesn't make me hate him, we just don't agree on what the union believes are workers rights.

Unions are not for Capitalism, I am. Unions are not interested in the Constitution, I am. You make work for a union and feel different, but where your dues are going and your values are may not line up with your union steward.

supervel45 December 9th 2013, 12:59 am

GT300TD wrote:
TravisRice wrote:
Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr
Unions only make up 11% of the work force .............. That puts a lot of fellows on this board in the other 89% which excepts no blame for whats going on? Go ahead and strip the workers like the elected members of the Government did in Wisconsin........ now who we got to blame ?

Getting really tired of seeing the union card being played ............ We got a saying around here, there are three kind of people , Union, Non-Union and Anti-Union. I work with as many good non-union guys as I do union guys on a daily basis. I have no problem with them as they are no different than I am and they have no problem with me either. I am gonna go out on a limb and say your probably in the third group based on the comments.

I'll leave it at that. I will say this much, and you, and the everyone else, can take it for what it's worth. I think, there's enough Blame to go around for Everybody in this Mess. From the Top of the Totem pole to the Bottom, Left To Right and the Middle to, if you catch my drift. What do the guy's at the hall think about what's going on with the economy? Walmart seems to be the left's whipping boy, and the union's are the right's. It seems like a distraction, to keep people divided, and not look at the whole picture. So far everone's been civil and this thread has not been locked, which is good, as a few other threads have been.

Very well worded!

supervel45 December 9th 2013, 1:28 am

Answer this about minimum wage laws. 1. Do you think they are legal, Constitutionally speaking on Federal level? 2. Legal on State level? 3. Why or why not on question's 1 and 2?

Curt December 9th 2013, 11:29 am

If you think that 11% of the workforce doesn't have much political power, look at the donors for the last ~25 years.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

Answer this about minimum wage laws. 1. Do you think they are legal, Constitutionally speaking on Federal level? 2. Legal on State level? 3. Why or why not on question's 1 and 2?

There are a lot of things that are legal, but not constitutional. Anything outside of the Constitution should be left up to the states. The freedom of states rights, lets people decide if they want to live there or not. It's a shame that we can't invent a shame that decides case on the letter of the law instead of men that are biased one way or the other. It's against the law for our government to operate without a budget, but the liberals in office right now could care less because without a budget, they can spend as much as they want without having to justify the expense.

supervel45 December 9th 2013, 12:30 pm

The first National minimum wage law for adults was part of the NRA ( National Reform Act) of 1933. Before this most minimum wage type laws where targeted towards child labor. It was durning the Great Depression, that was triggered when the Stock Market crashed in 1929, due largely to, excesscive speculation, combined with bank loans for the speculation. FDR or Franklin D. Rosevelt was President at the time. The wage was set at .25 cents an hour. It was challenged to the Supreme Court and ruled Un-Constitutional. When FDR was re-elected by a wide magin, he wanted the wage act re-instated, and was going to appoint Justices to the court that would support it. In June of 1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed with a minimum wage set at .25 cents again. It was challenged to the Supreme Court again, and ruled as Constitutional, as the some Justice's reversed themselves, claiming the new case was different than the first one. It is claimed that FDR was going to set the retirement age to 70 for Justices of the Supreme Court, instead of Life Terms, if they did not rule in favor of the Wage Act. In 2007 Congress gave the States the power to raise the minimum wage over what the Federal level was set at. Alabama, Lousisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee or the only States without minimum wage laws. Washington state has the highest MW rate at $8.67 per hour. San Francisco, has the highest local rate at $10.55 an hour. The highest point for the Federal MW was in 1968 after it was adjusted to inflation, and was equal to 90% of what the poverity level was rated at. Just a little history of the minimum wage and how and when it came about.

DanH December 9th 2013, 9:55 pm

the same era , unions are forming for fair pay . why was that? big companys pay to much or the pay was low.

that era sounds like the last several years of our time

supervel45 December 9th 2013, 10:51 pm

DanH wrote:the same era , unions are forming for fair pay . why was that? big companys pay to much or the pay was low.

that era sounds like the last several years of our time

If you are interested in the period, you might read about Henry Ford ( since this is a Ford Site) in that area, and what all was going on. Probition was booming, along with the stock market, and it all went bust in 1929, and really did not fully recover, until after WW2. The era has some simularities to our times, but alot of differences, it does make for really good reading. Jimmy Hoffa was around back them, and was infamous with the unions, and what was going on.

qtrhors1 December 10th 2013, 12:28 am

Tough to compete against slave labor overseas. This why the factories are over there now. So our way of life is dictated by a workforce that is unprotected from mistreatment safety and wage wise. This was stopped in America years ago. So the big Companies went away. Now we all buy goods made by laborers who are treated the way our great grandparents were and worse. Im not Anti-union but I do think it did get out of hand. But ask yourself did the company HQ go to China or Mexico? Does the upper management still live in America. Did the increase in profits from foreign slave labor bring costs down? I think you know the answer. What happened to common sense? What happened to common decency? Now how about the central banking system? Maybe for another post.

Tim
P.S. I was a union railroader for 32 years.

supervel45 December 10th 2013, 2:09 pm

Great post Tim, and alot of good info. It is said that the global ecomony will not raise other countries up to our standard of living, just bring ours down to theirs. It seems to be doing that very well. Not all the money is going to corporate here either, alot is going overseas, but your point is valid. In the old days, I think people had more sense, and Patriotism, and could not be sold a bill of goods, so to speak, so easily. Think about the banks a minute. They make money by loaning it and charging interest. If people don't make enough money, to save, and get in a bind, they borrow. So they have incentive to promote loans, and credit, and keep people spending. They also profit from foreign expansion of our businesses, by financing it. I am not going to pick on the banks too hard, because this is what they do, and always have done. Bad loans durning the housing scandle, are a different story, and the banks, did play a large role, and got a major pass. The banks are not forcing people spend beyond their means on luxury item's, and no one is forcing corporations to export manufacturing overseas, unfortuneitly they do it of their own free will. The banks have a responibilty to make sound loans, no doubt. The stock market, shareholder's, lawmaker's, and law enforcer's, need to be included in the mix. If you are refering to the FED allowing money to be printed like crazy, that's a different story. If the minimum wage is increased, and more money is put into circulation, is it really an increase in buying power or just a policital gimmick?

DanH December 10th 2013, 6:15 pm

qtrhors1 wrote:Tough to compete against slave labor overseas. This why the factories are over there now. So our way of life is dictated by a workforce that is unprotected from mistreatment safety and wage wise. This was stopped in America years ago. So the big Companies went away. Now we all buy goods made by laborers who are treated the way our great grandparents were and worse. Im not Anti-union but I do think it did get out of hand. But ask yourself did the company HQ go to China or Mexico? Does the upper management still live in America. Did the increase in profits from foreign slave labor bring costs down? I think you know the answer. What happened to common sense? What happened to common decency? Now how about the central banking system? Maybe for another post.

Tim
P.S. I was a union railroader for 32 years.

"that was stopped years ago" who stopped it? The goverment made laws. Thats just what people need, the goverment setting standards on how people are treated or payed . How dare they do that

qtrhors1 December 10th 2013, 8:39 pm

"that was stopped years ago" who stopped it? The goverment made laws. Thats just what people need, the goverment setting standards on how people are treated or payed . How dare they do that[/quote]

Actually that is really only partly true. In many cases the workers finally got fed up and went on "strike"...it got ugly...then the Government stepped in. But in some cases the Government let it work itself out. I credit the workers involved for most of the changes. Since I worked for a railroad I will use it as a point in and of history. It is really where it started on a large scale in America. I belonged to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers...the oldest union in America. Railroad barrens got free land and used Chinese slave labor to build the nations railroads. The working conditions were horrible and many men died. After that came train crews...at one point brakeman would get maimed and it was a sign of experience. Before the Government mandated some of the innovations in train brakes that had been invented but thought to costly by the railroads....brakeman would run across the tops of the cars setting and releasing the handbrakes. Many were killed(the railroads figured it was cheaper to chuck the guy in the ditch and hire a new guy). I will always believe any operation that is 24/7 and or dangerous working conditions exist, the workers should have a say. It isn't always just about a living wage. It involves health and quality of life for the employee and his or her family. There are still deaths in the railroad industry today. How about mining operations? Yet another dangerous job. There are many more but I don't think any one can stereo type this nor should they. Now do fast food workers need to be union? Probably not. I agree many places unions are not needed. Like I said common sense...not sense of entitlement. I was proud to be a brakeman/conductor for 14 years and finally a locomotive engineer for 17 years. I did my job and after sometime, I was good at it. Thank God I had a railroad pension and had 30+ years when I could no longer pass the eye exam. Yes, the Government(FRA) is very strict on who gets a class 1 locomotive engineers license(BTW the pension is not funded by the tax payer, only the employees and the employers...and I earned every dime of it too).

P.S. Sorry this is off the subject of the thread. Im gonna shutup now Wink

Tim

supervel45 December 10th 2013, 9:26 pm

Thanks for the info Tim. Very informitive post. Alot of the skilled labor jobs or taken forgranted these days, and the history behind them. Steel Workers, comes to mind also, as a dangerous occupation, and many others. The big push now behind the minimum wage increase is from fast food workers. Congressional Progressive Caucus reps. Raul Grijalva, and Keith Ellision want the President to issue an Executive Order, to raise the minimum wage for workers employed through Federal Government Contracts with Private Companies. This goes a little past collective bagaining I think? Most jobs in this area are not minimum wage, but some of the contarcts are linked to MW and pay will go up across the board I am told. Seems like this would cost the government more money, which would require more Tax Revenue? Any thoughts on the matter?

bb429power December 10th 2013, 11:28 pm

There's a reason the MINIMUM wage is low, if you want more, go get more. The world isn't going to pamper you and increase your pay at your dead end job, get off your ass and go get a better job. Besides, if you take your job seriously and show up on time every day, don't slack, and do a good job... You can get your pay raised.

Sorry if I'm rambling on or being incoherent, the people my age just piss me off.

bigblok2000ranger December 11th 2013, 12:12 pm

bb429power wrote:There's a reason the MINIMUM wage is low, if you want more, go get more. The world isn't going to pamper you and increase your pay at your dead end job, get off your ass and go get a better job. Besides, if you take your job seriously and show up on time every day, don't slack, and do a good job... You can get your pay raised.

Sorry if I'm rambling on or being incoherent, the people my age just piss me off.

Agreed! being a fastfood server was never meant to be a career, it's a stepping stone. Either move up within the company or onto a better job. Some people just refuse to put the effort into bettering themselves and feel that despite that they still deserve more. If you want more earn it!

GT300TD December 11th 2013, 12:51 pm

Justin, you make a good point and it's good to hear from a young person on this subject. Many of the youth of today think they should start out making as much as someone who has worked for years. You have to earn a raise in pay by proving you are worth it. Also, those who work in a safe indoor environment do not deserve the same pay as someone who works on a dangerous job in a dangerous environment.
Steelworkers are sometimes confused with Ironworkers. Steelworkers make the steel where Ironworkers build the buildings and bridges with the steel. I am a retired Union Ironworker, worked 37 years in the trade and retired ten years ago. The last 3 years I worked I taught apprentice school. As was mentions railroad workers, coal miners, those who work in the construction industry, and a lot of plant workers would be subjected to sweat shop conditions if it not for Unions. Someone gets seriously hurt or gets killed because of dangerous or unsafe working conditions should not be tolerated. 8 hours work for 8 hours fair pay in a safe working environment is NOT too much to ask for someone who is willing to 'work' for a living. If employers abide by these conditions and the "Union Principle" is upheld maybe the government would not be asked to step in. Everyone who is willing to work for a living deserves to earn enough to survive.

jasonf December 11th 2013, 1:31 pm

This sums it all up.

Federal Minimum Wage - Page 3 1488851_630214027034086_1999921817_n

IDT-572 December 11th 2013, 6:12 pm

jasonf wrote:This sums it all up.

x2

People now want maximum pay with min effort or no effort..................... Rolling Eyes

GT300TD December 11th 2013, 6:24 pm

jasonf wrote:This sums it all up.

Exactly, everyone has to WORK for their pay.

342g December 11th 2013, 7:32 pm

GT300TD wrote:
jasonf wrote:This sums it all up.

Exactly, everyone has to WORK for their pay.

Ho-Hum

Lem Evans December 11th 2013, 9:49 pm

Here is the way it works in small town U.S.A.

1] I started working for my dad as a min. wage flunky.

2] My service manager started at my place as a ~ min. wage car wash/class D technician.

3] My parts manager started as a min. wage flunky.

4] I've had at least two technicians that started as ~ min. wage car wash/class D techs. & went on to open their own shops leveraging the training we provided.

In my world we can not live with min. wage results and hope like hell most of the 'hires' are promotable with in 4 or 5 months. Like has been said....min. wage should not be a career.

zbob December 12th 2013, 9:44 am

boy, you guys are all missing the boat. I could only wish to be a minimum wage employee again. 1.65 an hour. first the year would be 1970. second I would be washing cool cars at a used car lol. stuff like 66 mustang coupes, road runners, dart swingers,442s, stingrays, jags. oh there was one boss9 but it was slow. gas was 26.9, hamburgers 25 cents.
...thirdly girls could be felt up for a mcdonalds burger and playing your buddies 45 on your moms cheap ass box player.
.... I wasn't in the navy yet, I didn't know what my government was up too, I always smiled. I had no idea how much money I would make in my career. it will not matter anyway my friends. YOU ARE GONNA GIVE IT ALL TO SOME SELF ABSORBED WOMAN AND HER KIDS (MIGHT ALSO BE YOURS) HAVE A STROKE, POUND YOUR HEAD ON A ROCK ALL FOR NAUGHT. some of you are gonna buy two houses yet and just don't know it.
...so sit and think on that, lol. bob

TravisRice December 12th 2013, 4:32 pm

zbob wrote:boy, you guys are all missing the boat. I could only wish to be a minimum wage employee again. 1.65 an hour. first the year would be 1970. second I would be washing cool cars at a used car lol. stuff like 66 mustang coupes, road runners, dart swingers,442s, stingrays, jags. oh there was one boss9 but it was slow. gas was 26.9, hamburgers 25 cents.
...thirdly girls could be felt up for a mcdonalds burger and playing your buddies 45 on your moms cheap ass box player.
.... I wasn't in the navy yet, I didn't know what my government was up too, I always smiled. I had no idea how much money I would make in my career. it will not matter anyway my friends. YOU ARE GONNA GIVE IT ALL TO SOME SELF ABSORBED WOMAN AND HER KIDS (MIGHT ALSO BE YOURS) HAVE A STROKE, POUND YOUR HEAD ON A ROCK ALL FOR NAUGHT. some of you are gonna buy two houses yet and just don't know it.
...so sit and think on that, lol. bob

Aint that the truth. A guy I work with went through a divorce .......He said the judge told him they would split everything 50/50 ...... In the end he said they did, she got the inside and he got the outside...... LOL

bbf-falcon December 14th 2013, 11:38 am

Yep,been there done that. And was worth every damn penny it cost me. Actually losing everything I worked for for 20 yrs. saved my life and saved me money in the long run. cheers

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