The war for $15 to $16 is on and a new enemy has surfaced.
In the Art of War, you are to know your enemy. The wage warrior who will be leading the fight to kill any wage increase for the low wage workers is Richard Berman, who works for the restaurant industry. Berman runs a public relations firm.
The 71-year-old Berman is a skilled spin master believes that workers are not paid for what they need, but for what they can contribute, which sounds logical until you use logic. What workers can contribute means a lot of different things, such as making who they work for a lot of money. If that is so then the workers should have a piece of that pie.
Berman will push that higher wages will make jobs disappear, which is just bullpucky. It will create more jobs for when people have more money to buy products; someone has to make the products being bought or serve the customer at restaurants, which is where Berman will try to scare the workers into believing that new technologies will be used to replace their jobs, like tabletop computers screens to order food. Hell, you might as well just go use a vending machine.
Fox News and Berman will spin it. Just don’t believe it. If the minimum wage rate had gone up at the same pace as productivity gains the bosses made on the backs of workers, it would be $18.28 an hour today.
As social pressure mounts, President Obama and the Democratic Party politicians are proposing a paltry raise of the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. It is just slow walking minimum wage. It needs to be $15 an hour slow walked to $18.28 an hour.
I hope that I am wrong, but what I see at this time is our unions are going to be in the fight of their existence. This is the most perilous time of our life. The life we had is threatened like never before. Unions are the largest organized group of people who can save our country if things keep going the way they are heading at this time. We need to all stand together for power, but we each must prepare and plan to take care of ourselves and our families. We can fight the big fight and not be distracted by worry about things that can and should already be taken care of. For instance, stashing at least one month’s pay and at least a month or even a year’s worth of food, whether the food is staples (pasta, rice, canned goods) and meat or chicken in the freezer. Keep your vehicles' tanks full and if possible a gas can full. It’s in your best interest to also save money for house or rent payments plus extra. This is not new thinking for us old trade workers who had to prepare when...
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