as atrios, armando from the daily kos, nathan newman, and probably a lot more sites that i haven't run into yet have already noted, my own senator and statewide embarrassment rick santorum is pushing a minimum wage bill which claims to increase the federal minimum wage, but, in fact, would result in a pay cut for far more workers than it would help.
how's it work? i'm glad you asked! ricky's bill would "increase" the federal minimum wage to $6.25 per hour (it's currently $5.15), but then widen the exemption to make sure a lot fewer people get it. currently, an employer with less than $500,000 in revenue is exempt from the federal minimum wage (though a state minimum may apply, but i'll come back to that). santorum's bill would double the threshold to $1 million in revenue. so while 1.2 million workers would get a $1.10 per hour raise under the bill, another 6.8 million workers would be exempt from the minimum wage altogether.
on top of that the bill has all kinds of extra goodies for employers at the expense of worker protections. for example, it would exempt any business with an annual revenue of less than $7 million per year from a host of penalties for violating a variety of health, safety, pension and labor regulations. such conduct would still be technically illegal, the federal government would just not be able to meaningfully sanction the company for the first offense. and considering how rare any prosecution is for OSHA-type violations, this change is the practical equivalent to repealing the law for more than 5 million employers.
but there's more. the federally mandated 40 hour workweek would be replaced with an 80 hour workweek. that means that employers can force employees to work 60 hours in a week, provided they do not work them more than 20 the following week, without paying any overtime. this proposal has been floating around for a while, under the buzzword "flextime." but the term is misleading as it implies more flexibility for the employees. in fact, it means less flexibility for employees as employers are not required to get the employees' permission to work more than 40 hours. the employer could force employees to work erratic work schedules, disrupting the non-work life of the employee, for no extra overtime pay. considering the number of non-salaried employees who depend upon regular overtime to make ends meet, this change will likely give them a substantial cut in take-home pay.
finally, the bill royally screws tipped employees in a bunch of states that have increased the tipped employee minimums. this is yet another illustration of how the current republican leadership doesn't give a shit about states' rights. as nathan newman explains:
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.the economics policy institute has a good summary analysis (pdf document) of the effects of the bill.
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.
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 minimum wage amendment is expected to come to a vote on monday, march 7, 2005. first thing monday morning, i plan to call senator santorum's office. i actually think that everyone should call their senator about this issue. but if you happen to be a pennsylvania resident, make sure to call rick at his washington d.c. office:
511 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Main: 202-224-6324
rick's up for reelection next year and he's considered to be pretty vulnerable (at least by lefties like me). james carville famously called pennsylvania "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between" but the conservative middle of this state also happens to have a strong pro-labor tradition, even among santorum's social conservative base. i think ricky is potentially very vulnerable on this issue. so if you call, make sure to tell the person with whom you register your disapproval that you will remember santorum's minimum wage proposal in november 2006. and don't forget to be polite. rude calls to senate offices don't accomplish anything (and, in any event, it's not like you'll be speaking to rick himself)
