Vermont Senator and 2020 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is proving the point that government-mandated minimum wage hikes have detrimental consequences.
Part of Sanders’ campaign platform is his push for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
However, Sanders wasn’t paying some of his campaign staffers that amount and they went to the media to complain.
The Washington Post reports.
Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.
Sanders didn’t like the fact he was called out by his campaign staffers, saying their actions were “not acceptable.”
Fox News reports:
“It does bother me that people are going outside of the process and going to the media,” Sanders added. “That is really not acceptable. It is really not what labor negotiations are about, and it’s improper.”
Now, Sanders announced his campaign staffers will be paid $15 an hour, however, their work hours will be cut.
The solution is to “limit the number of hours staffers work to 42 or 43 each week to ensure they’re making the equivalent of $15 an hour,” he told the Register’s Brianne Pfannenstiel.
Sanders was criticized for his decision to cut his campaign staffers work hours.
I can't stop thinking of how stupid this is. Limiting hours so you can raise wages has literally no effect on how much your employees make. Only benefit is you being able to say you pay them $15 an hour. Beyond cynical. https://t.co/UdlxUBIhvA
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 21, 2019
While countless businesses suffer economic consequences when forced to raise wages they simply can’t afford, their employees suffer as well through fewer work hours or loss of employment.
For example, Restaurants Unlimited – a restaurant chain on the West Coast – blamed “progressive wage laws” in its bankruptcy filing.
Fox News reports:
In its filing, it declared, “Over the last three years, the company’s profitability has been significantly impacted by progressive wage laws along the Pacific coast…the result was to increase the company’s annual wage expenses by an aggregate of $10.6 million.”
Sanders’ cutting his staffers work hours is a textbook example of the consequences of pushing for a $15 an hour minimum wage hike.
