Every Conservative Argument Against Overtime, and Why They’re All Wrong

May 18, 2016 Paul Constant

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Now that the Labor Department has announced the new overtime threshold , conservative pundits and politicians are responding. Unsurprisingly, they’re against it! But what is surprising is how bad their responses are. Let’s look at some of the most common responses and examine exactly why they’re terrible. At Forbes, Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants and “a member of the Job Creators Network,” huffs : Turning highly sought-after entry level management careers into hourly jobs where employees punch a clock and are compensated for time spent rather than time well spent is hardly an improvement on the path from the working class to the middle class. Now, I don’t know Andy Puzder’s personal biography, but he sure sounds like someone who has never had an entry level management job. Why else would he straight-facedly argue that a bullshit title is more coveted than actual compensation for actual hours worked? For decades, employers have given out management titles to their employees like candy, in exchange for many hours of unpaid labor. As we talked to many Seattle-area employees while working on our secure scheduling podcast , we even heard stories about employees who were fired because they didn’t accept a “promotion” from hourly pay to a salaried manager position, simply because those employers knew they could get someone else to do unpaid work. What the new overtime rule does is it reestablishes a basic American tenet: if you work more than 40 hours a week, you get compensated for that work. Doesn’t matter if your title is “assistant manager to the assistant manager of the deputy director of operations” or just “a barista” — those rules apply to you and to your employer. Puzder also says: Most employers incentivize their managers to run the businesses they manage like they own them with salaries and incentive compensation including performance-based bonuses rather than overtime pay. This is a super-weird argument to make. This rule doesn’t require employers to take any rights or privileges
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Today’s New Overtime Rule Is a Big Win for the American Middle Class

May 18, 2016 Paul Constant

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Overtime

This morning at an event in Columbus, Vice President Joe Biden, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown will announce that the Labor Department is increasing the overtime salary threshold to $47,476 per year. The new threshold, which is scheduled to go into effect on December 1st of this year, doubles the current standard of $23,660. So what does this mean for you? If you’re in the middle class, it means you could be getting a raise. Or it might mean you’ll get back more hours of your life that you have until now devoted to unpaid labor. Or it could mean that for every hour that you put into your job over a standard 40-hour workweek, you’ll be earn time-and-a-half for your work. No matter what this means for you personally, it’s a huge win for the middle class, and will likely be seen as one of the Obama Administration’s crowning achievements. As Nick Hanauer wrote for Politico , “In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week.” Because the number has been kept artificially low since the 1980s, the amount of salaried American workers eligible for overtime is now down to about 11 percent. This has been disastrous for the middle class, driving salaries down from the 1970s (when adjusted for inflation) while increasing the number of hours worked. In other words, for the last forty years Americans have been working harder and longer for less money. This reasonable new overtime threshold* is a solid step toward correcting this imbalance. So say your salary is lower than$47,476 per year. And say this threshold is enacted despite the inevitable conservative pushback, as is likely. What does work in America look like after this? As stated, if you work more than 40 hours a
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New Study Confirms That the Top One Percent Isn’t Interested in Trickling Their Wealth Down to You

May 17, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics

We all know the rich are getting richer and inequality is on the rise. But John Kolmos just published a paper with The National Bureau of Economic Research which explains how large the disparities are: [Between 1979-2011] the income of the middle class 2nd and 3rd quintiles increased at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.7% per annum, i.e., barely distinguishable from zero. Even that meager rate was achieved only through substantial transfer payments . In contrast, the income of the top 1% grew at an astronomical rate of between 3.4% and 3.9% per annum during the 32-year period, reaching an average annual value of $918,000, up from $281,000 in 1979 (in 2011 dollars). The thing that a lot of people don’t understand—and that conservative commentators don’t want you to realize—is that those two numbers are related. This is not happening in a vacuum. The income of the middle class and the income of the top one percent are inextricably linked, and the choices we make as a society affect their relationship. If we decide to pass laws that favor the wealthy, money goes to the wealthy. If you pass minimum-wage laws and other policies that encourage middle-class growth, inequality will shrink. Have you read Nick Hanauer’s American Prospect piece on the parasite economy yet? It’s one of the most compelling cases for a $15 minimum wage yet written, and it’s a damning indictment of low-wage employers. But it also explains where all that money has gone: So why do parasite employers keep wages low? Because they can. And in recent decades, employers have relentlessly exploited this power imbalance, eroding labor’s share of the economy from an average of 50 percent of GDP between 1950 and 1980 to a ten-year-average of only 43 percent today, while profits’ share of GDP has risen by a similar amount. That’s about a trillion dollars a year that used to go to
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How We Won the Fight for $15 in Seattle, and What’s Next

May 11, 2016 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage

Last night, David Rolf debuted his brand-new book, The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America , to a packed room at Town Hall. A taped video introduction by Mayor Ed Murray set the tone for the evening as he declared that with the $15 minimum wage, “we turned the impossible into the inevitable.” Rolf’s own talk, and the comments from the panel of citizens who helped bring a $15 minimum wage to Seattle and SeaTac, proved that all it takes for the impossible to become real is a lot of hard work. Rolf began his introductory remarks by asking the audience to picture a presidential candidate in 1976 giving a speech that accurately predicted the future. Everything in the speech would seem impossible back then: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the addition of China, Brazil, South Korea, Russia and South Africa to the international community, whole new industries built around technology that couldn’t even be imagined forty years ago. But then imagine that immediately after the candidate predicted that America would become the wealthiest nation on earth, he also predicted that 95 percent of the wealth created would go to the top one percent, and that government would be more interested in detaxing and deregulating big business, breaking unions, and establishing “a new economic apartheid for brown and black Americans.” That candidate would be shamed out of politics forever, Rolf said, and their party would lose the White House for generations. But those predictions are exactly what happened, he explained, because over the last forty years “we believed the wrong theories” and “we followed the wrong leaders.” Rolf said he “grew up believing we [in America] were number one.” But now we only have the “27th largest middle class in the world;” by that metric, Germany is now number one. A big reason why everything is going
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A Groundbreaking New Report Upends Conventional Wisdom About the Minimum Wage

May 5, 2016 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage

You’ve heard opponents argue again and again that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. ( And you’ve seen us refute their claims at every turn.) If you increase labor costs for businesses, they claim, employers will have to either raise costs or lay off employees. They discuss minimum-wage increases in such simple language that it’s hard to argue with them: wages go up, employment goes down. A child could understand that, right? Unfortunately, simplicity doesn’t always equal truth. For most of the history of humanity, we believed through our uninformed observations that the sun circled the earth, and that misconception colored our understanding of the way the universe works. These charges that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs are just as untrue as the belief that the earth is the center of the universe. Luckily, we now have proof that raising the minimum wage doesn’t kill jobs, in the form of a new report from the National Employment Law Project . Titled “Raise Wages, Kill Jobs? Seven Decades of Historical Data Find No Correlation Between Minimum Wage Increases and Employment Levels,” authors Paul K. Sonn and Yannet M. Lathrop, using data collected with help from T. William Lester, PhD., lay out every federal minimum-wage increase in America since 1938, making “simple before-and-after comparisons of change 12 months after each minimum-wage increase.” This seems basic enough, and it’s fairly remarkable that nobody has ever thought to do it before. So what did they find using these methods? Out of 22 changes in the federal minimum wage since 1938, “in the substantial majority of instances (68 percent) overall employment increased after a federal minimum-wage increase.” This means that one year after the national minimum wage went up, employment was up 15 out of 22 times. Of the decreases remaining, the vast majority occurred just after or during recessions, when employment always decreases, no matter
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One Year Ago, Conservatives Predicted a Pizza Drought in Seattle. Were They Right?

May 4, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics, Minimum Wage, z pizza

Just over a year ago, Ritu Shah Burnham, the owner of the Capitol Hill outpost of the national Z Pizza franchise chain announced that she was closing her pizza restaurant because of Seattle’s rising minimum wage . Shah Burnham expressed concern about the future of her employees to the local Fox affiliate: “I absolutely am terrified for them,” she said. “I have no idea where they’re going to find jobs, because if I’m cutting hours, I imagine everyone is across the board.” Shah Burnham’s quotes were picked up and circulated across the country by conservative news sites and economists as a sign that Seattle was on the fast track to destruction. Now that a year has officially passed since the Z Pizza saga exploded in the local media as a small-scale indictment of Seattle’s minimum-wage battle, I thought I’d check out the Capitol Hill pizza scene. How many pizza restaurants have opened within walking distance of Z Pizza in the time since that fateful Fox Q13 report in April of last year? Here, in order of personal preference, is a list: 1. Dino’s Tomato Pie (Nine minute walk from the old Z Pizza location.) From its intentionally terribad website to its self-proclaimed “longest bar in Seattle,” Dino’s Tomato Pie feels like it’s been around for decades. I’ve only eaten at Dino’s once since they opened in early March, but I keep having flashbacks to their delicious pizza—square, with thick crust and a spicy tomato sauce. It’s my clear favorite of all the new places that have opened on and around Capitol Hill. 2. Italian Family Pizza (Twelve minute walk from the old Z Pizza Location.) Italian Family Pizza is opening soon on First Hill , and as soon as it does, it’s going to be a serious contender for my coveted Favorite Pizza Restaurant Within Walking Distance of Z Pizza title. At their downtown location, Italian Family Pizza serves up huge pies—never slices—in a variety of styles. They are all
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Here Are the Six Steps of Denial for Minimum Wage Opponents

April 29, 2016 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage

In a brilliant bit of aggregation, Working Washington has collected all of the Seattle Times Editorial Board’s anti-$15 editorials in one post . Using headlines and a line or two from each of the 15 editorials the Ed Board has published, the post runs in chronological order from October 2013 to two days ago, and it spans the fight for $15 in both SeaTac and Seattle. It’s a fascinating look at how opponents always respond to arguments for raising the minimum wage with the same canned replies. And this collection is particularly interesting because it provides a taxonomy of the steps of denial that minimum-wage opponents go through. Here they are, in order: 1: Apocalyptic threats. “…forget about anyone building another hotel in the city of SeaTac,” the Editorial Board warned in their very first anti-$15 editorial, as though travelers would suddenly stop needing places to sleep because the minimum wage increased. Less than a year later, when Seattle started considering a $15 minimum wage of its own, the Editorial Board warned that doing so could “undercut the economy’s resurgence,” thereby casting us forever to the hellhole that was the Great Recession. 2: We’re through the looking glass, here, people! It’s vital for minimum-wage opponents to try to trigger feelings of shame and alienation in municipal areas by pointing out that they are doing something that has literally never been done before. Surely if nobody else has raised the minimum wage this high, it must be a bad idea, right? “SeaTac has just volunteered to conduct an economic experiment on itself,” the Editorial Board warned. Then, when Seattle got in on the fight, the Editorial Board’s metaphors got a little eerie: “Seattle is about to take off on a flight unfathomable just a year ago.” Oh, no! You mean like in Lost? They try to shame the city for standing alone: “Significantly, no other local city is proposing such a broad wage hike.” They
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New Report: Want to Lower Incarceration Rates? Raise the Minimum Wage.

April 26, 2016 Paul Constant

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incarceration, Policy

Max Ehrenfreund at the Washington Post reports on a fascinating new look at how to lower mass incarceration numbers. Mass incarceration is failing to prevent crime, according to the Obama administration — so much so that the president’s staff is looking in a few unconventional places for new ideas on public safety. For example, raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour could prevent as many as half a million crimes annually, according to a new report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers , a group of economists and researchers charged with providing the president with analysis and advice on economic questions… The authors consider a few ways of reducing crime. They forecast that hiking the federal minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $12 would reduce crime by 3 percent to 5 percent, as fewer people would be forced to turn to illegal activity to make ends meet. By contrast, spending an additional $10 billion on incarceration — a massive increase — would reduce crime by only 1 percent to 4 percent, according to the report. Of all the many reasons to raise the minimum wage, I have never once seen reduced incarceration mentioned as a benefit, so that’s certainly something to be added to the list. But I also need to point out that America’s shameful incarceration rate is not a problem that can be fixed with strictly economic solutions. Much of our prison problem has to do with systematic racism, and many of the incarcerated were put there due to dumb, overly aggressive drug laws that target people of color and/or poor people. This is a problem that spans generations; it has ruined neighborhoods and families and many, many lives. Resolving our problem with rampant incarceration is not going to happen with the passage of a single law. We need a suite of laws and policy on a national level to begin to address the problem—drug law reform, sentencing reform, reinstating voting rights for people who’ve done their time, finding ways to make re-entering the
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Remember: Bathrooms and Guns Don’t Mix

April 25, 2016 Paul Constant

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Guns, Trans

Sometimes two very different hot-topic news stories combine into one ugly Frankenstein’s monster of a newspocalypse. Those kind of car-crash current event moments are most likely to happen in Florida. The Orlando Weekly reports that gun-lovers and the anti-trans bathroom bills have finally reached a boiling point: After Target announced its transgender customers and employees can use store bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, Orlando-based Liberty Counsel president Anita Staver said she would be taking her Glock .45 into Target’s restrooms, saying the gun “identifies as my bodyguard.” I mean, the cravenness of the move is almost admirable: Staver is combining the current conservative anti-trans panic and the perennial conservative pro-gun fever into a perfect storm of idiocy and opportunism. Staver says by bringing her gun into restrooms in Target, she is seeking “protection from the perverts who will use the law to gain access to women.” (Somewhat related: I wrote about the NRA’s very bad advice about bathroom gun etiquette last month.) This is fear mongering of the highest order. I mean, Staver is practically reaching Glenn-Beck-in-2009 levels of apocalyptic panic, here. Her portrayal of bathrooms as lawless zones where anyone can and will be attacked with full approval from the government is beyond over-the-top. But more importantly, her combining of trans bathroom issues with rampant gun culture reveals a serious logical fallacy in the conservative position. Let’s for a minute consider the conservative opposition to trans bathroom access: without strict laws to enforce the division of genders, they argue, bathrooms will be overrun by sex offenders attacking women. Presumably, those laws will empower business owners to verify the genders of people who use restrooms in their establishments. It’s unclear how that will happen, especially since in many states it’s possible to change your gender on your drivers license with the help of a physician.( Here are the laws in Washington state ; you can look up laws in the rest of the country here .) Maybe business owners will be
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Surprise, Surprise! The Chamber of Commerce Doesn’t Seem to Like Secure Scheduling

April 20, 2016 Paul Constant

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Economics, Minimum Wage, Scheduling

City reporter Erica C. Barnett reports on The C Is for Crank that Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce is preparing its membership for the secure scheduling law that our City Council is discussing . Maud Daudon, the president and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, sent an e-mail that included the following appeal to member businesses: The Seattle City Council has started exploring legislation that would restrict how employers schedule their shift workers. We are closely monitoring the process, and have consistently shared the message that Seattle must proceed thoughtfully: scheduling is highly complex and a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach will create more problems for employees. Furthermore, many businesses already have processes in place to directly meet the expectations of their employees. If you would like to share how you’ve adopted scheduling practices that work well for your employees, please contact Meadow Johnson, our senior vice president of external relations. First of all, there is no law yet. The City Council is discussing secure scheduling with workers, employers, and labor experts, so this condemnation of a “one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach” is way too premature and constructed on nothing. In fact, based on the Chamber’s predictably negative responses to paid sick leave (PDF) and the $15 minimum wage , I think the cookie-cutter allegations of cookie-cutterism are the real cookie-cutter approach here. And the assertion that “many businesses already have processes in place” is a curious one; just because many employers pay more than the minimum wage doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have minimum wage laws. In fact, by raising the minimum wage, we’re putting less of a burden on those good employers who pay more than their low-wage competitors. So if some businesses do a good job of scheduling, why wouldn’t they want, or why would they care, if employers with exploitative scheduling practices had to follow secure scheduling laws? The business response to Seattle’s secure scheduling investigation has really been quite underwhelming. When councilmembers Lorena González and Lisa Herbold asked for
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