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California Minimum Wage IncreaseOn behalf of my employer, I was asked to write a letter regarding the California minimum wage increase in my own words to an association we belong to that does industry lobbying and awareness building of its members. Because I believe this issue will affect every Californian, I would like to share it with all of you: While we understand that it takes more than minimum wage to live reasonably in California, and we start everyone above minimum wage at (my company), we feel that increasing the minimum wage will still hurt our employees. The price of production for every good grown, manufactured, handled, or sold in California will increase in cost across the board, which in turn will force everyone to increase the selling cost of their goods to consumers. Increasing the minimum wage significantly may also cause unemployment to jump as well, because employers will be far more likely to get rid of anyone who is not as productive as the employer would like to see, but who they were willing to employ at minimum wage.
What good does it do to increase the minimum wage when the price of a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk goes up accordingly, aside from make Californian goods significantly less competitive to goods produced elsewhere. There are two choices as an employer. You can keep your current workers at the same pay scale and put them closer to the minimum wage level, and therefore closer to poverty. Or, you can increase your wages to a similar level above minimum wage, and increase your cost of production significantly. For (my company), the latter would put us in a position of being far less competitive. We would likely lose a significant amount of business, especially out of state, to other manufacturers who are based out of state and could have as little as half the labor costs we have to build a similar product. If an employee is worth more than minimum wage, they should be able to prove it and rapidly increase their pay to a more suitable level. Additionally, if an employer is unwilling to budge, the employed should not have an issue finding an employer who is willing to pay them what they are worth. --
The letter is to be published in next months issue of my employers association.
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well done
as an editor and a writer, i must say that this is very well edited. no fair that you're getting published before me though. no fair.
haha, thanks sar. I must
haha, thanks sar. I must admit, it was you who edited it =P
I feel that it's the people
I feel that it's the people in upper management that are going to be hurt more than the regular wage earners. I live in utah and minimum wage is $5.15, I don't believe its changed for nearly 10 years. I've only had one job where that is what I earned. It sucks thinking you're working for basically 4 bucks an hour after taxes.
well done
Mike,
I think that this is a very good article... I actually just finished writing a paper on the subject, but it was for my social theory class so I was approaching it from a more critical view on the policy of minimum wage and the flaws in our economic system. Anyhoo, it's a good article, and raises some important questions. I agree with Sarah on it needing a bit of editing though....
Check out this article, I found it really useful: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm676.cfm
Hope you're doing well... what is 'your company' by the way?
-Elana
another way?
What if there were some sort of "Minimum RAISE" laws?
Well there are 'minimum
Well there are 'minimum raises' and higher minimum wages for government jobs. However, you inherently end up with lots of less productive workers who make more money that way.