How much would it cost consumers to give farmworkers a significant raise? A 40% increase in pay would cost just $25 per household
Economic Policy Institute offers context for wage increases for farmworkers:
How much would it cost consumers to give farmworkers a significant raise? A 40% increase in pay would cost just $25 per household
The increased media coverage of the plight of the more than 2 million farmworkers who pick and help produce our food—and whom the Trump administration has deemed to be “essential” workers for the U.S. economy and infrastructure during the coronavirus pandemic—has highlighted the difficult and often dangerous conditions farmworkers face on the job, as well as their central importance to U.S. food supply chains. For example, photographs and videos of farmworkers picking crops under the smoke- and fire-filled skies of California have been widely shared across the internet, and some data suggest that the number of farmworkers who have tested positive for COVID-19 is rivaled only by meat-processing workers. In addition, around half of farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants and 10% are temporary migrant workers with “nonimmigrant” H-2A visas; those farmworkers have limited labor rights in practice and are vulnerable to wage theft and other abuses due to their immigration status.
Despite the key role they play and the challenges they face, farmworkers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the entire U.S. labor market. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it would not collect the data on farmworker earnings that are used to determine minimum wages for H-2A workers, which could further reduce farmworker earnings.
This raises the question: How much would it cost to give farmworkers a significant raise in pay, even if it was paid for entirely by consumers? The answer is, not that much. About the price of a couple of 12-packs of beer, a large pizza, or a nice bottle of wine.
Excellent. Thanks.
What I see nowhere is over what time period that $25 would be paid? Makes a hell of a difference.
But rather than have to try to get the courts to go in to bat to enforce the rights of illegal immigrants (because that is seriously what you are recommending), how about institute a universal basic income so lowly paid people are better off regardless of where they work. This would also help the illegals because for the people who employ them they would have no alternative than to pay a living wage. But better still would be sensible temporary work visa arrangements.
WHAT FARM WORKERS NEED IS NOT UBI — THEY DESPERATELY NEED WHAT MOST AMERICAN WORKERS DESPERATELY NEED: A MARKET MECHANISM TO HOOK THEM UP WITH THE M_A_X_I_M_U_M THE CONSUMER MARKET IS WILLING TO PAY.
That’s called a labor unions (together with sector wide contracts) — which we can empower tomorrow with one simple piece of labor legislation — to wit:
Wage increases at high end restaurants can cause sales drop for two reasons: (1) the obvious, prices of meals rising; (2) the less obvious, customers may have less money in their pockets to spend on high end merch after having been confronted across the board with higher prices at their supermarkets, at Target, at Micky D’s …
… accompanying newly bulging labor union density’s collective bargaining power or a minimum wage a lot higher than today’s 1956/2020 federal minimum, both $7.25 (inflation adjusted) — or both.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.75&year1=195601&year2=202008
On average most businesses have 10-15% labor costs – outliers run from 7% for Walmart to 25% for fast food. Ergo, average doubling labor’s wages should average add 12.5% to consumer prices. Cab driver guess work: leading to 10% loss of original customers’ sales. But, across the board wage hikes for bottom 40% of workforce should add a lot of sales – at businesses bottom 40% earners patronize.
All the while, average doubling (!) bottom 40% percent wages.
* * * * * *
When Congress first laid down the legal blueprint for organizing labor — it could never have anticipated today’s well oiled anti-union machinery stamping (stomping!) out unions until they are virtually all gone — 6.5% in private (non gov) occupations should be seen as virtually gone.
Card check in today’s toxic, 93.5% union free labor market; raising the minimum wage from the 1956 level ($7.25) to what bottom pay earners could probably collectively negotiate for themselves ($15), EITC that transfers 2% of income, while 40%* earn less than what we think the minimum wage could be — are just adding life boats to American labor’s Titanic. We need something real – something to restore collective bargaining for real:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
* http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/who-makes-15-per-hour/ (2015 — gated — but best story)
Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton never nearly fathomed (pun intended) American labor’s going-down-for- the-third-time desperation – which is why Alfred E. Trump populates the White House today. Nuff said?
DD,
Atta boy. Glad to see you back with sector wide labor agreements. Keep riding that pony.
Organization is key. Whether it starts with union or political party, then in the end the feeling is mutual. One way or the other we need what is effectively a labor party whether it is one institution or two. If we want higher wages relative to the capital share of income, then those demands must be backed by organized institutions. Blogs and protests are not enough on their own.
Here are some hi-tech examples of the “electric fence” put up by modern business to keep labor unions out — all put to illegal action — completely illegal. ONLY WAY BACK — end union “voter repression” with a simple bill:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
https://www.onlabor.org/weekend-news-commentary-october-25-2020/
CNBC this weekend examined the recent myriad ways that Amazon has been implementing surveillance technology to stifle onsite unionization efforts. The article covers Amazon’s Intelligence Analyst job postings from September that included the need to monitor “labor organizing threats” as part of the job description. It also focuses on Amazon’s reported monitoring of employee listservs and closed Facebook groups, its implementation of union tracking systems as Whole Foods, and its stated intent to purchase “SPOC” software that can be used to analyze and visualize union activity. Some employees involved in labor organizing at the company have taken to using encryption software such as Keybase to avoid organizing discussions being monitored and to protect employees’ identities.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/24/how-amazon-prevents-unions-by-surveilling-employee-activism.html
[headline] How Amazon keeps a close eye on employee activism to head off unions
[excerpt]
Amazon warehouse workers have a long history of agitating for change. But the coronavirus crisis has generated new momentum for employees to speak candidly about workplace conditions.
Since March, employees have held protests to demand safer working conditions, created online petitions to draw attention to their concerns and formed new worker groups. The surge of employee activism has raised the question of whether labor unions might try to seize the moment to organize Amazon workers.
Between March and September, the company employed more than 1.37 million front-line Amazon and Whole Foods workers in the U.S. That number doesn’t include the tens of thousands of contracted drivers who are responsible for Amazon’s last-mile deliveries.
Unionizing Amazon’s workforce would be an uphill battle. The company has managed to head off major labor unions since its founding in 1994. Labor unions have organized some of Amazon’s European workforce, but no U.S. facility has successfully formed or joined a union.
“Amazon has always been actively trying to dissuade employees from organizing unions,” said Marcus Courtney, a longtime labor advocate who attempted to unionize call center workers at Amazon in the early 2000s. “That was true 20 years ago and it’s true today.”
[snip]
ONLY WAY BACK:
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
Reason,
Follow the EPI link (but add the obvious d at the end since the link is actually broken at the time of this post), scroll to the bottom, and you will find it is an annual cost.
I must spend more than the average consumer on produce. (and less on pizza, beer, and wine)
Arne:
It works now. I went in and changed the link to go to the article cited. It will take you directly to the article.
“About the price of a couple of 12-packs of beer”
Not for us.
About two six-packs of local craft beer.
In re the nursing homes, seems any funds meant for increased wages to the workers went to owners and management.
Dennis – I hate having to repeat this but minimum wages and unions only help a subset of people. UBI helps everybody that needs help.
Reason,
UBI is a great idea and will probably just stay one until the wage class is much better organized for political action than it is now. If you really want to implement UBI, then the first steps will be to organize the electorate into taking political action on its own behalf. Boosting minimum wage is a good target for organizing wage workers. We have already seen it in action over recent years on a small scale. Well now, how could we possibly go about organizing the wage class for political action? Has that ever been done before?