Sebastian Martinez Hickey on Minimum Wage; Saru Jayaraman on History of Tipping

KPFA - CounterSpin

This week on CounterSpin:

The journalists at Yahoo Finance tell us that a Connecticut McDonald’s charging $18 for a combo meal has “sparked a nationwide debate” on escalating prices in the fast food industry. The outrage, readers are told, is “partly attributed” to a recent raise in the minimum wage — which has not yet gone into effect.

From there, we move on to how it isn’t just that poor working Joes will have to pay more for a Big Mac, but also there will be layoffs of fast-food employees. We meet Jose and Jim, who say they thought higher wages would be good, “considering the decline in tipping and increasing living costs.” Alas no, Yahoo explains: “The reality was harsher. The wage increase, while beneficial for some, has resulted in job losses for others, leading to a complex mix of gratitude and resentment among affected workers.”

Elite reporters seem so far removed from the daily reality of the bulk of the country that this doesn’t even ring weird to them. A raise in wages for fast food employees means fast food employees have to lose their jobs — that’s just, you know, “economics.”

We get a different view on raising the minimum wage from Sebastian Martinez Hickey, researcher for the EARN (Economic Analysis and Research Network) team at the Economic Policy Institute.

Also on the show:

A largely unspoken part of media’s wage conversation is the whole sector of workers whose pay rates are based in enslavement. In 2015, CounterSpin learned about tipped wages from Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. We hear part of that conversation.

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