Recently, workers in national restaurant chains held minimum wage protests across the country in something like 100 cities. They were immediately set upon by the corporate media—their attack dogs snarling for their masters and nipping at their heels for daring to demand a living wage. For many people, it was a revelation, for workers in most restaurants are un-unionized at-will workers, meaning they can be fired on a whim for any reason at all. Many such workers can barely keep a home, pay rent, and eat on the meager pay they receive. Hence the demand for a higher, livable minimum wage.
In 2009, the national minimum wage was set at $7.25 an hour, or $290 a week. At that rate, with a family of four, a person will be living below the nation’s poverty line. That’s why workers across the country have now demanded a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Predictably, the media attack dogs of capital were unleashed to bark two basic messages: that food service and restaurant businesses provide jobs for teenagers just entering the working world, and that restaurants barely break even and cannot afford to pay such a wage. Interesting.
But next time you’re in a franchise restaurant, take a good look behind the counter, for there, more likely than not, you’ll see a man or a woman in the autumn of their lives with gray hair, a bald head, a wrinkle or two, and bifocals. Secondly, the nation’s franchise restaurants like McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Subway, and Kentucky Fried Chicken are among the biggest franchises in the nation. McDonald’s, for example, has over 32,000 locations. Subway has over 34,000. McDonald’s pulled in over $24 billion dollars in 2011 and is the 111th biggest business in the U.S. In other words, business is good.
There’s another reason why a minimum wage hike of 15 bucks an hour makes sense. It stimulates the economy from the bottom up. The big bailouts following the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 failed miserably to stimulate the economy, for it protected the assets of the wealthy who had no incentive to share the wealth. They just sat on it, building their pile. It bailed out banks, not people. If poor and working people get a raise, they don’t put it in a bank; they buy things. And let’s face it, this is a consumer-driven economy. It’s past time for a raise in the minimum wage, and 15 bucks an hour should be the very least to be accepted. From in prison nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
