Can’t live on this minimum wage

MIAMI – Some people insist that raising wages does not guarantee long-term economic stability. That argument is partly correct, but let us remember that inflation is unstoppable because of the banks’ actions, because of speculation in stocks without backing and because of the enormous military expenditure, which forces the Federal Reserve to print more money without a real relation to the economy.

As we know, the working class cannot be blamed for all this.

Usually, the employer wastes no time looking for new mechanisms to stay afloat after the minimum wage goes up (by law), passing the cost over to the consumers and reducing the working conditions to the employees. But it would be absurd not to demand better wages for fear of inflation, when the system continuously favors the continuously rising cost of living.

The employer never sits on his hands. He responds, and it’s true that the same workers who supposedly would benefit are those who will later pay for the rise in prices at supermarkets. But the State has a role as a mediator between the proletariat and the rich.

Can you imagine if the basic salary had never been raised thanks to the right-wing thesis? The original statute signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which covered only 38 percent of the labor force, called for 25 cents as a minimum wage. Today, that would be $4.04. From these figures, you can deduce how poorly the worker would fare if wage increases didn’t exist.

After a cautious and gradual rise in wages, on July 2009 the old minimum wage ($5.15 per hour) was only a memory compared with the new figure – $7.25 – with the exception of nine states, some of which didn’t even have a minimum wage.

This act of Congress (called “The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007) was an amendment to the existing Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which was created through the Department of Labor to regulate and limit possible abuses by the employers.

Those who cling to the Republican notion that raising wages will in the long run damage the economy spread suspicious statistics and studies that deny the reality we see all around us, such as the myth that a great percentage of the workers who earn the minimum wage are almost exclusively young people who live in economically stable families, often way above the poverty level.

According to this fallacy, only a tiny, almost insignificant minority consists of heads of family trying to survive. This is a cruel lie.

When I was little, my father’s first job in Miami was to deliver luxury tiles to the homes of the rich, especially mansions on the waterfront. The work was purely physical and extremely tiring, especially because my father had to perform it while wearing worn-out moccasins brought from Cuba, not boots with iron toes. Despite his chronic back pain and the measly salary (no medical insurance, either), he had to accept the conditions just like all the other workers because he had no other option.

I remember seeing a picture of him, working hard among expensive marble tiles. It made me cry, because I didn’t want to see him being exploited, abused and squeezed for so little money. At that moment, I decided not to ask for toys ever again.

A possible change in salary to $10 per hour would inject about $60 billion into the economy (sounds fairer than bailing out the auto industry or the banks) and this in turn would help the small businesses that are the foundation of the middle class in this country.

That’s because, although a higher wage might seem to make production or services more expensive, in the long run it will increase the consumption that sustains the small businesses. Hispanics and blacks receive low wages but, predictably, women are the worst affected because they never receive salaries equal to their mates, even though they perform the same work.

On a minimum wage of $7.79 per hour (the current rate in Florida), it is no longer possible to live in the midst of the present crisis, when a typical electricity bill takes the breath away from anyone (even when we live in the South and don’t require heating), and the monthly rent cuts into the food budget for many families. And let’s not even mention health insurance.

In sum, it would be more humane on the part of the government to raise the wages a little, because today’s dollar is not as strong as yesterday’s, whereas work continues to be as hard as ever.

Click here to read a related piece by Max Castro, The wages of poverty.