For one thing, as Krisken pointed out, to keep businesses from hiring teenagers who cost less than minimum wage required for adults to do drudge work instead of those adults.
Fair enough, I suppose, but in Michigan you get breaks earlier and can work fewer hours in a week if you're under eighteen. You are not doing the same amount of work, no matter how you slice it. I agree that restricting wages for legal adults is horseshit, but for minors? If the law views you as being incapable of doing the same work as an adult, why should you get paid like an adult?
But the amount of work SHOULD. And since legally minors can not do the same amount (or in some cases, even the same level of work) of work as an adult, why should they get paid the same wages? Once you're eighteen, you're an adult so you should get paid like one and if you're a drop out you've accepted the responsibilities of adulthood. But if you're in school and working under restrictions, then you're not an equal to your adult co-workers.
You mean the teenagers who can't work until closing time, can't work openings, and are legally required to take breaks more frequently? Having them paid less would probably make it easier for them to get jobs than it is now.
In Michigan, you get a 30 unpaid minute lunch by law when you work for six hours, with a fifteen minute paid break when you work four. Unless you're under the age of eighteen, where it is five hours and three hours, respectively (IIRC). Naturally, your employer knows this and can schedule accordingly.
Yes, that's the exact problem. That's the point where employers stop hiring adults and start hiring teenagers.
So all businesses will operate exclusively from 3PM to 9PM now?
Maybe you would have them if you'd watched a high schooler leave after their five hour shift (really 4.25 hours with their breaks) while you skipped your 15 minute break and delayed the hell out of your lunch because you're busy as hell. Then maybe you'd notice that high schoolers don't work like adults do. Then maybe you'd see the inherent unfairness in them being paid the exact same hourly wage as you when they work far fewer hours, with far fewer responsibilities, and with more breaks than you.
Or maybe I'm amazed at how you can lump a group of people together and absolutely ignore that those businesses can fire or give notices to those same kids, or that their poor performance will affect their future raises (remember this? We talked about this already in this thread). Just because you've had some bad experiences with some kids doesn't mean that all adults work harder than kids do. Shit, some of the laziest, shittiest workers I've ever encountered have been adults who, by virtue of their fucking age, felt they deserved more than the other people they worked with. That doesn't mean that all adult workers are piss poor and should make less. That's what performance reviews, warnings, and firings are for.
No, but they'll start hiring only teens to run those shifts.
And allowing businesses to pay teenagers less to do that same job you're complaining about will not change your circumstances for the better in the slightest. At all. In fact, with no cap on the hours they can work, you're even more likely to get a call from your supervisor saying you don't need to come in for your shift.
I didn't say a damn thing about the quality of their work. The minors I worked with were fine cashiers. However, state laws mandated they treated with kid gloves. State laws mandated they coddled. State laws mandated they get paid as much as their adult counterparts who had to pick their legally required slack. Shitty, lazy employees didn't hack it at my Target. We were the top selling store in the district, the busiest store in the district, and one of the largest stores in the district. Everyone either pulled their weight or quit. The state made it so that minors weren't legally allowed to pull their full weight. I don't see why it is unreasonable that allowances be made in the law to reflect.
And who will cover the teens breaks? Will they employee folks to work one or two hour shifts to do closings?
No no no no no, you misunderstand me. I feel you either cap their pay or cap their hours. Not both. If they're able to do the same amount of work, get the same breaks, then they get the same pay. If they have to be coddled, then their pay should reflect the slack. Equal work, equal pay. Unequal work, unequal pay.
I didn't say their work was inferior. I said they had to be coddled, that they were legally prohibited from working as hard as I did. I'm willing to bet they'd have worked until closing if they could have, handled an extra hour until lunch, etc. But the state said "no". When you're a minimum wage cashier at a non-union (thank god, why the hell does a store like Target or Wal Mart need a union in this day and age?) store, you don't just demand a raise because you're an adult and have to work harder than a high schooler. That's not how this works.
Then, as I said, every shift-slot available 3pm-9pm will become shifts for teenagers. Not you or other adults. Why would you ever hire an adult when you can legally hire a teenager for less to do the exact same job?
They're relatively effective in making sure that stores don't replace all adult workers in the afternoon shift with teenagers for less than min wage. That's kind of what they're actually for.
If they are considered to be capable of doing the same work as their adult counterparts, then they deserve the same pay. If they are legally considered unable to do that work (for whatever reason, as schoolwork concerns could easily apply to college students and yet legally it does not), then they don't deserve the same pay. What I find hard to follow is the logic behind mandating they work fewer hours and get more breaks (which has what to do with their school work?) without a corresponding cut in pay. The limitations have a very valid reason behind them, but that doesn't magically make things equal.
Pretty much this.
Yeah, I was trying to go for a 'best case scenario'. That's about the lowest I've seen for a 1 bedroom in my area, though most are more like $550 and up.
The cheapest 1 bedroom in my town is $850 a month.
Thats exactly my point.
Who proposed this? I'm looking over the thread and I can't find it.
...and I doubt you will find anyone here who feel differently from this statement, the question is how do you do?
No one is directly saying that. It is, however, the argument that has been pushed by the GOP for the last 3 years while simultaneously demonizing teachers and other public workers. The two things are never argued at the same time, for obvious reasons.
I'm saying that CEO salaries have been on the rise for years, with the top 1% possessing over 40% of the nations wealth. Slashing those wages doesn't seem like such an awful thing to me, and if they want to continue to increase their wealth, they shouldn't have a problem taking a pay cut. Hell, if they don't and just retire, that gives the opportunity for someone else to take their places. I see no harm in this. Competition should be just as vital at the top of the business model as it is at the bottom.
Like I said before, I don't think anyone here disagrees with you that it might be better if the top 1% took a pay cut. The issue is, as I asked before, HOW do you make that pay cut happen and keep any form of healthy competition?
I wouldn't force anyone take a pay cut (how could you possibly do it legally, anyways), but I would repeal most of the tax cuts for the top 1%. As Krisken says, it's a little rich to complain about the greedy unions in Wisconsin when one of the first things Scott Walker did was issue more tax cuts for top earners.
The problem with that is that shareholders may not see it that way. If the CEO can cut most of the workforce, and still have a positive earnings per share increase, shareholders will likely cut him a break, at least for now.
Personally, I think the first step to getting the ball rolling is to get a certain ruling overturned... the one which states that a company must act in the best interest of it's shareholders. That single ruling gave rise to the dreaded 1980's Businessmen archetype that still exists to this day.
I get how you cut pay, what I'm more asking about, and sorry, I guess I'm being super unclear here, how do you get companies to actually do these things? It's great to say that "Measuring a successful company can not be based entirely on stock prices." but if they disagree then what? Whats in it for them to change how they do business?
This is why I've always been in favor of things like caps for bonuses and salary caps for executives. Any time a business or industry is unable or unwilling to self-regulate for the public good, it has always been the duty of the government to step in... and we already have a demonstrable example of it working in practice: The entire world of professional sports.
