The Minimum Wage Needs a Hike Right Now
/February 1, 2012
Sheldon Silver, Democratic Majority Leader of the NY State Assembly might be hearing those chants from OWS and the 99% around the country. The Speaker has proposed to raise the basic minimum wage to at least $8.50 and hour, which would gross out to $17,000.00 per year.
Mayor Bloomberg, who likely considers $17,000 light for his pocket bill fold - at first supported the bill - then appeared to backtrack, because of course we all know that in NY State $17,000 is so much cash that one might do something crazy after paying for rent, food, insurances of every type, transportation costs....
The Mayor "conceptually supports" the bill, but worries that NY State might become uncompetitive with such a wealthy pay scale for low wage working folks and that teenagers, who of course apparently still deserve to be treated like slave labor - should not get the ax for being next in line to ride the $8.50 gravy train.
Where are we as a society, where you cannot rent a studio apartment in Manhattan for under roughly $1700 a month, that $8.50 an hour should be anything but too ridiculously low! Fight for a living wage! $10 an hour is the minimum a working person should get for selling their labor to an employer.
And the excellent site of The Living Wage Campaign in NY: http://www.livingwagenyc.org/