Labor

The minimum wage in this state might just be going up here soon. According to a post on the Capital Beat blog at the Greensboro News & Record, both the North Carolina Senate and House passed legislative measures containing an increase in the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour.

The House and the Senate both voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $6.15 an hour today, but both in different ways.

This morning, Senators gave final approval to their version of the budget, which has a minimum wage increase tacked onto it.

We have long heard the benefits extolled of trickle-down economics, from no less than Hoover, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II - arguably four of the worst economic President's of all time. I'll give Reagan the cold war, but not that he fought it on the backs of workers while the wealthy got wealthier.

Trickle down economics posits that if all tax cuts are given to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, then they will spend that money investing in new jobs and increasing profits and wages for their workers. Thus, the bolus of money at the top will slowly trickle down to every American.

The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says that North Carolina has the lowest union density of any state in the union. Expressed as the "percentage of each State’s nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members," NC sits at 3.7%. (source - PDF)

This is something that North Carolina conservatives are no doubt proud of: unions are bad for profits (nevermind that they're good for people). And I fully understand that some unions have done as much as Friends of Big Business to give unions a bad rep.

But it seems to me that even if you're skeptical about the value of unions, dead last is not where you want to be on the list. A union is often the only way for the interests of workers to find representation in business decisions. Also, big businesses lobby the hell out of Congress (after all, it's their Congress too, right?) in ways that Joe SixPack can't seriously compete with on his own. It was unions who ended child labor, invented the 40 hour work week and the weekend, and played an instrumental role in bringing about free universal public education.

Yesterday I wondered whether State Treasurer Richard Moore was brave or crazy to suggest an increase in NC's minimum wage before a meeting of business leaders. Carter Wrenn at Talking About Politics (citing an article in the W-S Journal) suggests another word for Moore's speech: pandering. I think it's kind of a cheap shot. Here's part of what Wrenn had to say:

There are a lot of good arguments that can be made for increasing the minimum wage. Here’s what Mr. Moore told the NCCBI according to the Journal: “ ‘Businesses actually start to do better when consumers have more money in their pockets,’ he said, adding that Lee Scott, the chief executive of Wal-Mart, supports an increase.”

It looks like (looks like, mind you) Richard Moore signed up for a free Google blog to tout his plan for a dollar increase in the minimum wage. (Thanks to sharont for the link!) I've got just a couple of thoughts about that.

First, it seems strange to me that a professional politician would use a free blog platform when he could pay consultants thousands to build the same thing from scratch. Don't get me wrong: if Moore isn't above getting down with Blogger I'll consider that a plus. Just seems kinda unusual.

Check out the coalition website:

www.onedollarmore.blogspot.com

State Treasurer (and likely gubernatorial candidate) Richard Moore is calling for a $1 increase in North Carolina's minimum wage. (A little quick math: $5.15 x 40hours = $206 a week; throw in a little vacation and that's $10,300 a year; does anyone really think that's enough to live on, much less raise a family on?)

Moore made the call at a meeting of the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, a pro-business lobbying group that styles itself the state chamber of commerce. What's the word for that: chutzpah? meshuggener? Or is Moore's read of the land that NC businesses are ready to support a modest minimum wage increase? Stay tuned...

I know we were praising Gov. Mike in this space just yesterday for his efforts to raise teacher pay, but it's seriously groan inducing to hear him selling the shoddy state of labor in NC.

Site Selection magazine named North Carolina the state with the Top Business Climate for 2005, reclaiming the top spot from Texas, which unseated North Carolina's three-year claim to first place from 2001 through 2003.

"We can do everything they can do about 25 percent cheaper in terms of labor capital expenditures and land acquisition," North Carolina Governor Michael Easley told Site Selection.

North Carolina tops Texas for best business climate - 2005-11-02