Re: WGA Strike 90%+ vote to strike

On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:n0hmh356mlluol7n42a4jp0eenu67bgqaa@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:01:24 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:a1elh3llh2vrpi9v8i3df54toq406pl5lg@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:41:33 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1976ejm6a7np7d6531@xxxxxxxxxx

According to a web site I found:

In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on
average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty
line for a family of three was $14,630. ["Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?",
Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001
Poverty Guidelines, 2001]

A 2003 wage analysis reported that cashiers, the second most common
job, earn approximately $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week. This
brings in annual wages of only $11,948. ["Statistical Analysis of
Gender Patterns in Wal-Mart's Workforce", Dr. Richard Drogin 2003]
Wal-Mart Associates don't earn enough to support a family

The average two-person family (one parent and one child) needed
$27,948 to meet basic needs in 2005, well above what Wal-Mart reports
that its average full-time associate earns. Wal-Mart claimed that its
average associate earned $9.68 an hour in 2005. That would make the
average associate's annual wages $17,114. ["Basic Family Budget
Calculator" online at www.epinet.org]

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/

It seems they're paying poverty-level wages.

Those figures could be very misleading. How many of those workers are
high
school students and not people trying to live on those wages?

The people that scream about minimum wages often misreport statistics as
though every high school student working at McDonalds for minimum wage
was
trying to live off of $11,000 annually. They aren't, nor are they doing
without health care. Trying to claim them as working poor is
disingenuous
at best.

Low end jobs are supposed to be stepping stones... you do them to get
the
money (and sometimes experience) that you need to move on to something
better.

I'd find a higher evidence to speculation ratio more convincing, Carl.
Anyway, why do you assume that the sort of person who has to take a
job at Wal-Mart -- and we aren't talking about moonlighting high
school students, who are a tiny percentage of the workforce and don't
work 29 hours a week -- have the skills, qualifications, and ability
necessary to "move on to something better"? We aren't talking law
school graduate here.


53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
(High school and college).

A non-sequitur: being between the ages of 16 and 24 doesn't mean that
a worker is in high school and college.

High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work
force.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm

Where did they say that? I couldn't find any statistics that did.

I found them for a similar conversation elsewhere a few weeks ago.
I'm sure you can find them. Th e statistics are there to be found.


Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a week,
when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that many hours.

I said high school students were a tiny percentage of the workforce,
and they are, given that high school students are a tiny percentage of
the population.

But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
minimum wage.

Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.

And let us hope that not many high school students are
working 29 hours during a school week: that would be illegal for a
student under 16, and harmful to the academic aspirations of a junior
or senior. Certainly, I've never met any who did.

By the time high school students are juniors and seniors, many do.

I worked that many hours, and so did a number of people that I worked with.
I can't speak of the people you knew.
I had a car and a girlfriend in high school...both of which required
attention.


In any case, no one is denying that high school kids work at
McDonalds. The problem here is everybody else. All I have to do is go
to the store to see people struggling on minimum wage or something
like, e.g., the poverty-level wages paid by Wal-Mart.

Oh please. Give me a break.

You're going to have to back that up, Carl, because that's what the
people get paid around here -- poverty level wages. I see help wanted
signs, and what they're paying. And no, most of those employees aren't
kids. Do the non-unionized stores in your area pay higher wages? I
didn't think so.

Most of them
aren't high school students, who wouldn't even be available during
business hours. These are precisely the conditions that unions would
help to redress; this source, for example, says that the average union
wage is 28% higher than the average non-union wage:

http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/index.php?page=Union+vs.+Nonunion%3A+Wages+(2004)

-- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
differential.

Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
benefits.

See what that did to the US auto industry.

Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
can't compete.

How about the US electronics
industry?

Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
time,
until they get laid off.

Great business model.

For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
American factory closes. Great business model.

--
Josh

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.
We know now that it is bad economics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

.

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