$15 Minimum Wage Is Over Due

The pandemic relief bill, known as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 has passed the Senate we can feel fairly confident that the major points will be there when reconciliation of the House and Senate versions is complete. One aspect that was removed is raising minimum wage. Most Democrats in Congress have recognized that its past time to raise the minimum wage since inflation has eaten away at the buying power of a dollar over the nearly 12 years since it was last adjusted.

You might think that most minimum wage workers are teenagers working after school and summer jobs but you'd be wrong. In reality minimum wage earners average 35 years old, in fact only about 10% teens. 59% are women, 54% are full time employees. Most of them are in fact the frontline workers most at risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their exposure to customers while on the job.

Several groups are pushing for a gradual increase to $15 an hour so that it’s a living wage. $15 sounds like a lot until you start calculating what it costs to live in this country. Even in supposedly low cost of living states like Texas a single person working a 40 hour week needs to earn more than $12 an hour just to rent a one bedroom apartment, and pay for transportation, medical insurance, utilities, food, and clothing. In the San Antonio metro area which includes Seguin, New Braunfels and Boerne it takes almost $13.50 an hour, while that same person living in Corpus Christi needs over $14 an hour, Houston over $14.25 an hour, and Austin over $15 an hour.

If your cousin or brother-in-law tries to argue that minimum wage was never intended as a living wage, it’s just a starting place to get experience, you can let them know they don’t know their history at all. In his 1933 address following the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living,” he stated.

As Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren recently put it “When billionaire CEOs skimp on wages and rely on public subsidies to cover their employees’ health care, housing, and food costs, that’s not a free market. That’s a rigged system. We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and put power in the hands of working people.” Remember, its companies like Walmart that have high rates of employees on SNAP, Medicaid, and other federal and state benefits that your taxes pay for. Those profitable companies are being subsidized by your tax dollars.

Republicans are trash talking raising minimum wage with poor arguments like the one spouted by South Dakota Senator John Thune. He claims he did just fine just out of high school in 1978 making $6 an hour, except that when you consider inflation since then that’s equal to $24 an hour today. Even when he was making the minimum wage of $2.65 back then its equivalent to $10.90 an hour today.

Minimum wage was always intended to be a living wage and while that varies some from city to city $15 an hour is a reasonable compromise.

Low Wage Workers In America

Nearly half of all Americans workers age 18 to 64 hold low wage jobs according to a recently released study by the Brookings Institute. Don’t let your MAGA hat wearing relatives and neighbors claim that’s all liberal propaganda, Brookings may lean slightly left on analysis but their data checks out every time. While even Texas, with one of the highest poverty rates and some of the lowest wages in the country, has seen a reduction in the percentage of workers earning minimum wage in the last couple of years the fraction of workers earning near poverty level wages hasn’t shown any improvement.

Nearly 6 in 10 low-wage workers work full time, year-round. 1 in 7 have a bachelor’s degree and more than 4 in 10 have children. When I was a teenager in the late 70’s about 48% of teenagers worked year round now that's down to less than 30% today so don't let anyone tell you that low wage jobs are just for kids or that it’s just for part-time workers and the uneducated.

After inflation the federal minimum wage has dropped 17% since 2009 and 31% since 1968. Workers earning the federal minimum wage today have $6,800 less per year to spend on food, rent, and other essentials than did their counterparts 50 years ago. A minimum wage worker in 1968 earned the equivalent of $10.54 in today’s dollars, that’s more than nearly quarter of today’s entire workforce earns.

Analysis by the Pew Research Center shows 19.8% of U.S. adults ages 65 and older or nearly 10.5 million people, reported being employed full- or part-time, likely because were unable to save for retirement due to low wages. Older workers represented 6.6% of all employed Americans last July, that’s more than double the 3% in July 2000. Workers 55 are a much larger fraction of the workforce than in July 2007, just before the Great Recession generated mass unemployment. Employment rates have returned to pre-recession levels for adults younger than 55 but not increased like rates for older workers. Currently workers 65-72 are working or looking for work at a rate 50% higher than workers the same age in prior generations.

After inflation, wages for the working class Americans are still below pre-recession levels. While worker productivity sharply increased, total income for working class families has been falling since 1979 all while corporate profits shot up. This includes wages for college graduates, whose hourly wages have dropped significantly since 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

It is way past time for the United States to increase the minimum wage. We can argue about how much it should be but there is no excuse not to at least restore it to 1968 levels and while we’re at it index it to inflation so low wage workers don’t keep getting the short end and have to fight the same battle over again every decade.

Texas could raise the state minimum wage like quite a few others have but Republicans here are averse to data driven decision making so they refuse to acknowledge that those state which have raised minimum wage are doing better than those which did not. Frankly I’d settle for the state legislature repealing the law that prohibits cities from setting their own minimum wages. We could then watch the results of come cities raising theirs while others don’t and see which overall economy does better.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 8, 2020

Democratic Priorities in the 2019 Texas Legislature

Last week I wrote about how the election results changed the makeup of the state legislature and courts here in Texas. Here’s a look at what that change means to you and me in terms of over 400 pieces of legislation filed on opening day of pre-filing with the state legislature based on analysis by the Texas AFL-CIO.

There was more good than bad for workers in that first batch including a strong group of bills raising wages, strengthening pensions and other workplace benefits, expanding health care and improving access to higher education were filed as well as addressing sexual harassment.

First the bad, HB 222 by Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, would eliminate the ability of cities to enact earned paid sick leave ordinances. The ordinances, like those recently enacted in Austin and San Antonio, could provide hundreds of thousands of Texans the freedom to stay home when they are ill, are under challenge in court as well. Keep in mind that this issue is about more than benefitting employees since it actually protects other employees and customers from contact that could spread the disease further. Think about the restaurant worker who feels the need to work with the flu so they can pay the next month’s rent or put food on the table for their family.

SB 32 by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, would establish the Texas Promise Grant Program to pay tuition and fees for Texas students whose annual household incomes are less than $150,000; SB 33 by Zaffirini specifically addresses two-year colleges.

HB 48 by Rep. Mary Gonzalez, D-El Paso, would create a publicly available database of employers who have been found to have committed wage theft. As it stands now business owners can get fined for stealing from their employees and then weeks later start it all over again with new employees who have little chance of finding out that the person hiring them is likely to steal from them. Should Rep. Gonzalez’s bill be passed into law there would be a website that prospective employees could check to see of a business makes a habit of stealing wages before it happens to them. Having such information widely available should also provide a deterrent to employers as such behavior will become widely known in the community and they’ll be shamed for it in addition to finding it harder to find good workers. In addition HB 83 by Rep. Romero raises penalties for repeated failure to pay wages and HB 106 by Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, would increase protections against employer retaliation when an employee files a claim for unpaid wages.

HB 56 by Rep. Armando Martinez, D-Weslaco, would provide for cost-of-living adjustments on pensions for retired teachers; SBs 92, 93 and 94 by Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, would add a supplemental "13th payment" for retirees and otherwise shore up the Teacher Retirement System.

HB 133 by Rep. Terry Canales, would make it state law that tips are solely the property of tipped employees and therefore the practice that some restaurant and bar operators of claiming a percentage of tips for themselves would be outlawed.

Minimum wage is a big issue that several bills address, HB 194 by Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, would raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour; HB 290 by Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, would raise the minimum to $10.10 an hour; SB 113 by Sen. Jose Menendez would set the wage at $10.10 an hour, as would SJR 5, his constitutional amendment proposal. SB 161 by Sen. Rodriguez would allow cities and counties to set local minimum wages.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 16, 2018

Republican Plot to Kill Paid Sick Leave

How do you feel about going into a restaurant or fast food place and being served by someone who is obviously ill? How would you feel if they were sick but you couldn’t tell just by looking or their behavior? How do you feel about your child being served by someone sick? What if it is another kind of retailer or an office you work in?

It’s important to consider this because not every employer provides paid sick leave and that encourages people who are paid at or near minimum wage to work even when sick. We all understand that many illnesses like the flu are easily transmitted from one person to another and we even have a word for an action taken to stop the spread of especially virulent strains, that word is quarantine. If you’re ill and don’t have some overwhelming reason to be out and about most people will self-quarantine just because they don’t feel like doing anything other than staying home in bed or on the sofa.

Low income folks without paid sick leave often are compelled to work even when quite ill by the need to make the rent or buy groceries for their family. Instead of self-quarantining they then interact with dozens of people and run the risk of infecting some of them. Many businesses recognize that having sick people at work just makes it more likely for other members of the staff to become sick as well and therefore offer paid sick leave.

In an effort to address the health concerns of the public who may shop at or otherwise visit locations where the employer encourages ill staff to work the cities of Austin has passed a paid sick leave ordinance. In San Antonio citizens have gathered 140,000 signatures on a petition to get a proposition to create a paid sick leave ordinance on the November ballot.

So far this seems quite reasonable but our Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton (R), claims the Texas Minimum Wage Act preempts cities from enacting a paid sick leave ordinance. I’ve read the legislation, nowhere in it does it even mention sick leave. AG Paxton isn’t the only one on this crazy horse, our state senator, Donna Campbell (R), sent the mayor of San Antonio a letter urging him to block such an ordinance on the grounds that employers don’t like it. According to her letter some members of the business community have taken exception to the proposition on the grounds that it will cause them to lose business opportunities. This is typical Republican logic, make poor, sick people work until they drop and the heck with the health consequences for everyone else because “job creators” need every penny.

Sen. Campbell and AG Paxton just don’t get that employers aren’t job creators, customers are, and when you sicken your customers and your other employees you’re really just hurting your own bottom line. Worse they don’t care about the public health issues created by forcefully encouraging sick people to expose themselves to the general public. Given that Campbell is an emergency room doctor you’d think she’d know better but as in other cases in the past Campbell has let her raging right wing agenda override her professional judgement.

In about 90 days you and I will have an opportunity to send her a resounding message that her failure to look out for the health and well-being of the citizens of her district and all of Texas are unacceptable by electing Steve Kling as our new state senator for Senate District 25.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 10, 2018

In the last presidential election Donald Trump ran a faux populist campaign that fooled just enough people in the right states to win. Just six months into his term we can already see that he is not who he claimed to be. He claimed to have a healthcare plan that would cover more people at lower cost when in fact he had no plan at all.

The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t provide routine healthcare to all its citizens. In the last week or so the real populist group Our Revolution, a Bernie Sanders campaign spinoff, announced its Summer for Progress project which includes providing good healthcare to all Americans. The group is supporting HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act filed by long time supporter John Conyers.

Our Revolution knows that there is more to be done than just insuring that the sick get the treatment they need. It is unacceptable that a person should work a full time job and still live in poverty so Our Revolution is promoting the Raise the Wage Act, HR 15, which would raise the minimum wage. Remember as it stands now our tax dollars subsidize the profits of some of America’s most profitable companies, think Walmart, by providing benefits like food stamps and housing assistance to their employees whom they pay poverty wages.

Back in the 1960’s a high school education would enable a worker to get a job that would lead them to a middle class life but that hasn’t been possible in decades yet attaining a college education is impossible for too many Americans due to the high costs. I can still remember television ads for the United Negro College Fund which used the tag line “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. That idea is as true today as it ever was and applies to even more people. Keep in mind that one of reasons that companies use when applying to bring in foreign workers is that there aren’t enough Americans with the necessary skills here in the U.S. If we educated our citizens we might find that wasn’t the case so Our Revolution is promoting the College for All Act, HR 1880 which would pay the tuition and fees for any American who attends a two year or four year college.

Today many Texans think they’re registering to vote when they get a drivers license or update it but even though they mark the box the Department of Public Safety doesn’t always forward the information to the Secretary of State so the person remains unregistered and when they show up at the polls they’re unable to vote. A federal lawsuit was filed last year over this but that’s not enough, it’s time we require every state to automatically register voters who pass through their drivers license offices so Our Revolution is promoting the Automatic Voter Registration Act, HR 2840 which would do just that.

While these issues and more are important right now we have an even larger, worldwide problem looming over us and that’s global climate change. It is now a certainty that the next 50 years will see more frequent crop failures due to longer, deeper droughts. We’ll see more frequent, more intense hurricanes. In order to minimize the damage we have to stop wrecking the environment soon so Our Revolution is supporting congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in developing a Climate Change bill.

Join us 10am Saturday at Hemisfair Park in support of Medicare for All.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 28, 2017

A "miracle" that never really was

The “Texas Miracle” is no more, in fact it never really was. Texas women are suffering high rates of death in child birth or shortly thereafter and our economy has soured with the downturn in oil and natural gas prices.

Recent reports show maternal death rates have doubled in recent years making Texas the most deadly state in which to give birth. In fact if we were a stand alone nation we’d be worse than every other developed country. There is as yet no definitive answer to why more Texas women die in child birth or for associated reasons but it’s not hard to imagine that the fact that Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation might have something to do with it. You can thank our Republican leadership for that since our governor and state legislature have refused to accept Medicaid expansion even though the federal government will cover 90% of the cost.

There is also a likely connection to our Republican led government cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and other providers of women’s health care. There is certainly a connection to the increased number of births covered by Medicaid.  

When running for governor in 2014 Greg Abbott promised continued growth of the economy and that we would be number one in the United States. He has failed miserably; Texas has fallen from third in the nation to twenty first. Republicans have taken credit for a strong economy in Texas for the last 20 years which they claimed was due to a “business friendly” read low tax, low service government. No change in either taxes or services have occurred, the rest of the country continues to recover from the 2007 Wall Street implosion and yet Texas’ economy is well on its way to the bottom.

When Greg Abbott sought the governorship in 2014 he said he didn’t want Texas to be like California, well he got is wish. Massachusetts, Oregon, Delaware, Colorado and California are ranked as the top five economies in the nation by Governing magazine. The one thing they all have in common is Democratic leadership in the governor’s mansion and the legislature. Some of those states have raised the minimum wage, some have increased spending on infrastructure, they’ve all accepted Medicaid expansion. Remember that expanding Medicaid not only means more people get health care it also means more people are employed providing health care and those people spend money and buy houses.

In short our Republican leadership has taken the wrong road and all of Texas is suffering for it. We have an opportunity in November to start cleaning house. The only way that happens if we all vote so take a family member, take a neighbor or take a friend and if anyone tells you that their vote doesn’t make a difference or they’re all alike remind them that we could be growing like California instead of tanking like Kansas.

Cornyn Votes for Corporate Welfare

Wednesday, Senator John Cornyn once again voted in favor of welfare for businesses. He voted to continue subsidizing the profits of many of America’s largest and most profitable corporations by filibustering debate on raising the minimum wage.

Full time employees currently paid at or near minimum wage often live in poverty and receive various forms of government assistance such as food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid. We the tax payer are essentially subsidizing the profits of businesses that employ them.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

Dr. David Alameel who is running to be the Democratic nominee for US Senate in November knows what it’s like to live on low wages, he worked in the California strawberry fields as a young man to help his family make ends meet. Later Alameel joined the US Army and used his GI benefits to go to college, eventually becoming a successful dentist. After years of building a multi-location practice he sold his business and became an investor and philanthropist who as worked to improve education for the most vulnerable in the Dallas area.

David Alameel will make a much better senator than the one we have now. Vote for him in the May runoff and again in November for a better Texas and a better America.

Why am I a liberal?

I’m a married, straight, middle aged, white male living in the suburbs, the product of 12 years of Catholic schools so you might expect me to be a conservative and yet I’m a liberal; not a neo-liberal but a New Deal/Great Society liberal.

I’m a liberal because I believe that public education is what made this nation great and helped win WWII as well as the peace that followed it. I believe that every child no matter how poor or broken the home or how poor a community they come from deserves a decent education. I believe quality education makes for more productive workforce and a happier, healthier life.

I’m a liberal because I believe that the criminal justice system should be even handed with rich and poor. I believe that justice isn’t just about punishment it’s also about healing the community. I believe that while the death penalty may make you think “they got what they deserved” that penalty has been dealt out to those who were innocent and even when meted out to those who were guilty it only served to harm that person’s family.

I’m a liberal because I believe in economic fairness including fair pay for all, women should be paid the same as men when they do the same job. I believe that everyone who works a full time job deserves a living wage and access to medical care for their family. I believe that farm workers and domestic workers deserve the same minimum wage and job protections as everyone else.

I’m a liberal because I believe our society is rich enough that we as a nation are responsible for seeing to it that no child goes unfed or with medical conditions untreated.

I’m a liberal because I believe the best way to restore and maintain this nation’s economy is to have a full employment policy so that when market demand for labor is low our government puts people to work either directly or through infrastructure improvement projects. I believe that shared prosperity is the only sustainable prosperity.

I’m a liberal because I believe in inclusiveness and human rights so I support marriage equality since every human has a fundamental right to love whom they choose. I believe in immigration reform because every human has a right to earn a living and care for their families. No one should worry that they’ll lose their job if the boss finds out they’re gay or an atheist.

I’m a liberal because I believe that it’s none of the government’s business what anyone does in their own home or to their own body so jailing someone for smoking marijuana or restricting a woman’s right to control her own body is out of the question.

I’m a liberal because I believe in community, we all do better when we work together instead of stepping on others in a race to get "ahead". I support expanding Medicaid because like public education it is good for everyone, healthy students learn more, healthy employees are more productive and all that saves money in the long run.

I’m a liberal because I believe that making war is too often done for the profit of a wealthy few and not the welfare of the many either in this country or in the nation that is the battlefield. I believe that if we do make war then our troops deserve not only our respect but also the finest medical care available whether they are wounded physically or mentally.

I’m a liberal because I believe that in a democracy government is nothing more or less than the organized will of the people. Government is there to insure that those people are not taken advantage of whether through outright fraud or abusing the commons.

I’m a liberal because I believe in protecting the environment that humans and our society have adapted to. Being green doesn't cost jobs by raising costs, it actually creates jobs and saves money as well as leaving a better world for all our children. I believe that as the nation that creates the most green house gases per capita we have an obligation to lead by example and significantly reduce our emissions before asking others to do so especially developing nations like India.

In short I’m a proud liberal because I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to make our world a better place and I accept my share of that responsibility. Do you?

Why are our tax dollars subsidizing highly profitable corporations?

Roughly half of all fast food workers use some form of public assistance, Medicaid, food stamps or housing assistance. 68 percent of fast-food workers are single or married adults who aren’t in school, 26 percent are raising children. Big companies that pay minimum or near minimum wage to their mostly adult employees are responsible for a high percentage of people on government assistance.

If you’re one of the 49 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes then you are being taken advantage of by Mike Duke, CEO of Walmart, and other top executives because you’re subsidizing their profits to the tune of $7 billion every year. That’s what it takes to pay for the public assistance relied upon by their employees. McDonald's subsidy alone is worth $1.2 billion a year, which equates to more than a fifth of its 2012 profits.

If you think you pay too much in federal taxes ask Congressman Lamar Smith why he allows your tax dollars to subsidize the profits of big corporations like McDonald’s, Walmart and Papa John’s. If you think your state taxes are too high ask Senator Donna Campbell why she isn’t working to make highly profitable companies pay their employees enough that they don’t qualify for public assistance.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to stop subsidizing their profitability by raising the minimum wage so that anyone working a full time job didn’t need our tax dollars to pay for health care, food and rent?