The Debate Over $1.25 An Hour
Under a new proposal currently being debated in Albany, Dawkins and the 91,000 other New Yorkers who make the federal minimum wage will see that hourly wage increase by $1.25.
Five more quarters an hour will not be enough to lift Michelle Dawkins out of poverty, take her off food stamps or get her away from Medicaid, but she said it would make a difference. In 2002 she made $13 an hour as a security screener, but she left the job to take care of her mother, who died of breast cancer two years later. In 2005 she made $11 an hour doing the same job she has now, but for a different company.
“I say any bit, even if it’s a quarter more, you’re gonna turn around and see a difference,” she said. “If it went to 10, it would make a world of difference.”
“We could go to restaurants, we could go to movies, we could get an accountant,” she joked.
Minimum-wage jobs are the fastest-growing sector of the state’s economy, and the number of workers making $7.25 an hour jumped dramatically from 6,000 in 2008 to 91,000 by 2011.
But whether Dawkins receives the extra $1.25 per hour, which will cost her employer an additional $2,900 a year, will have very little to do with how badly she wants or needs it—or even with what economists, business owners and voters say they want—and everything to do with politics in Albany.
The debate over whether or not New York will raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour is still raging. State Republicans don’t want to raise the minimim wage because they point to studies saying that raising the minimum wage would kill a significant number of jobs for unskilled laborers due to increased costs for employers. State Democrats point to studies showing that the studies Republicans point to are flawed, and also: It’s just human decency.
No matter where you land on the debate, the truth is that it’s very difficult to live on $7.25 an hour, and the minimum wage has not changed in New York since 2009, when the federal minimum wage law forced a $0.10 increase from $7.15 an hour. Also, wages need to increase each year due to inflation. What $7.25 bought you in 2009 now buys you less in 2012. Cost of living rises each year, but wages have remained stagnant. That’s clearly a problem.
Oh this makes my stomach hurt. A jump from 6,000 to 91,000?
@katastrophe I know, right? Ouch.
The article notes that McDonalds and Walmart actively lobbied against raising the minimum wage, even though most NY minimum wage workers work there (as well as Target and YUM! Brands).
@CubeRootOfPi “even though”? Isn’t that exactly WHY they lobbied against it?
@katastrophe Yeah that stat made my heart hurt. What kind of recovery can we make if these are the kinds of jobs we’re creating?
@stuffisthings Alas, the inability to edit.
Though to play devil’s advocate, you think they’d at least not directly lobby for it given their reputations on how they treat their workers. Of course, bottom line > reputation, unless reputation starts hurting the bottom line.
@CubeRootOfPi They don’t care because they don’t have to care. In my experience, very few people voluntarily shop at Walmart; they go there because they can’t afford the alternatives. Having ethics is a luxury that costs money.
Jesus, 7.25 an hour? We’re already over 10 here in Ontario, and I think it’s still going up a little bit. 7.25 an hour should be criminal. Let’s put all those State Republicans on 7.25 an hour for a couple of months, and see if that changes their fucking minds.
Those five quarters can definitely make a really big difference. I actually got a raise of almost exactly that size in my (before the raise) just-about-$1-over-my-state’s-minimum-wage job (btw, I think my state has the highest minimum wage in the country, but I was not exactly sittin’ pretty, money-wise, at that wage). Suddenly, money was not super-tight and I was able to spend a little more and save a little more and not feel so pinched and stressy and paycheck-to-paycheck-y.