Rise in Minimum Wage Far From Excessive
The claim from the Australian Chamber of Commerce that a raise of the minimum wage is “excessive” is the height of hypocrisy.
Seriously, after people blowing up over excessive CEO salaries in the tens of millions, a $21 a week rise looks like nothing. And this is just to match inflation.
In times of crisis, it’s the lowest paid that need the most support, not the guys at the top. How can they complain about such a meagre raise when we’ve heard of companies such as A.I.G. giving million dollar bonuses to its executives?!
The argument being made is that the two don’t correlate because small businesses are the main employer of workers on the minimum wage, and they’re at risk of growing broke, not the big companies with the overpaid executives.
So?
There’s still an uneven distribution of wealth. Maybe the government should bail out the small businesses instead? I bet the big businesses wouldn’t like that.
It’s the insanity of the system that means that mean some of the hardest working people like cleaners are paid the lowest, and then called greedy for asking for a wage rise and this can happen alongside executives earning millions.
Executives can point out that they’re not the ones paying the minimum wage to their employees but maybe this just means we need a reorganization of society so this inequality doesn’t exist.
Update: Margo also pointed out to me that it’s not the case that most employers of minimum-wage earners are small business owners. Think of chain stores such as McDonalds, as well as all of the high rise businesses in the city that employ cleaners to clean their offices at night.
