How Happy Is YOUR Labor Day?

Last week, prostrating himself before the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaire campaign financiers, Mitch McConnell swore that if they helped the GOP take over the Senate-- and reelect him in Kentucky-- he would guarantee that there would never be a vote taken on raising the mimimim wage. Happy Labor Day… as the rest of the civilized world enjoys nice long vacation, regular pay raises, healthcare, pensions, maternity leave and benefits most American workers no longer even dream of.

Yesterday, the Lexington Herald-Leader released a poll showing that most Kentuckians disagree with McConnell on the minimum wage. Kentucky voters have been victimized by a systematic anti-union propaganda onslaught through right-wing radio and it has had a tremendous impact-- except on the minimum wage. Thanks to the success of Hate Talk Radio, the state is pretty much anti-union these days but increasing the minimum wage is still something even Kentucky workers see as beneficial.

Fifty-five percent of Kentuckians think the federal government should raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, while 37 percent want to leave it alone. Eight percent were not sure.

Support for raising the minimum wage has dipped slightly since February, when a Bluegrass Poll showed 61 percent favored raising the minimum wage and 32 percent opposed it.

The issue appears to be especially popular among young people and blacks. Sixty-five percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 say the minimum should be higher, and 75 percent of blacks embrace it.

Seventy-one percent of Democrats back it, while only 35 percent of Republicans favor it. Fifty-six percent of independents said the minimum should be higher.

Slightly more women than men-- 57 percent to 53 percent-- endorse it, and 52 percent of Kentuckians with four-year college educations like the wage hike.

Support for raising the minimum wage decreased as income increased.

Sixty-five percent of respondents making less than $40,000 a year support a higher minimum wage, while only 41 percent making more than $80,000 a year favor it.

The increase garnered most support in Eastern Kentucky, where 62 percent back it. That dropped to 51 percent in Western Kentucky and the Louisville area.

Jane Eberwein, a retired businesswoman and teacher in Lexington, said the minimum wage should be increased.

"There are so many low-income people who can't get their head above water. I don't think it would be catastrophic to businesses to raise the minimum wage," she said. "It's been done before in the past and didn't kill business."

…Glenda Dryden, a poll respondent who agreed to a follow-up interview with the Herald-Leader, said Kentucky needed a right-to-work law.

"Unions were good things when workers were treated terribly, like having to work 15-hour days, but unions now, from what I read, are about raising a lot of money," said Dryden, a clerk in the Madison County sheriff's office. "People should be able to work without having to join unions."

Uninformed views like Glenda's warm the hearts of the plutocrats who met with McConnell. The party that wants to do away with the minimum wage entirely-- and that includes both Kentucky senators-- considers "Right to work" laws good labor policy-- a work force free of labor unions. Over the weekend, Tim Fernholz's look at the state of labor in America, has been driving conservatives crazy. Start with the chart up top. "[T]he share of US national income going to salaries and wages," he writes, "has been falling pretty steadily in the past four decades, and despite some recent gains, hasn’t yet returned to pre-recession heights."

Every time America produced $10 of income this year, $4.26 went into a worker’s pocket-- and the rest went to investors (minus taxes, of course.) Bummer.

This state of affairs is likely why, despite a growing economy and a falling unemployment rate, there’s still not much of a sense that a US recovery has truly taken hold-- unless you’re a corporation. Corporate profits as a share of national income are at their highest level since the US government began measuring them in 1947, which is even more amazing when you consider the growth of executive salaries and the rising number of self-employed professionals whose business income isn’t counted in this measure:

Trends like these are driving the debate about inequality in the United States today, and make Thomas Piketty’s theories about the growing advantage of capital over labor so compelling to many, even as economists debate the precise sources and durability of this disparity.

If these charts are giving you more heartburn than your Labor Day feast, consider raising a glass to US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen: Her revolutionary strategy at the Fed is predicated on generating higher wages for workers, a move that, at least in theory, puts some of the Fed’s awesome monetary power on the worker’s side of the scale.

Although the building trades unions tend to back Republicans and conservative Democrats, the GOP jihad against working families is not aimed only at progressive unions. All working families suffer under Republican policies-- which doesn't stop sold-out, right-wing labor bosses.

According to a February report from the Congressional Budget Office, the Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce total employment by 500,000 workers over the next three years. At the same time, it would lift more than 900,000 families out of poverty and increase the incomes of 16.5 million low-wage workers. What’s more, it’s reasonable to think we would gain jobs as a result of new economic activity generated by higher wages and new consumer spending.

But none of this mattered to Republicans who read the report. For them, it was vindication. “Raising the minimum wage could destroy as many as one million jobs, a devastating blow to the very people that need help most in this economy,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all but speaking for most of the Republican Party, and echoing decades of rhetoric against increasing the minimum wage.

All of this doomsaying raises a question: If raising the minimum wage destroys jobs and prevents employment, then lowering it would do the opposite. And if you gain from lowering the minimum wage, then why have one at all?

…Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, for example, has no tolerance for the minimum wage. “When you set the minimum wage, it may cause unemployment,” he told ABC News during his 2010 Senate campaign. “The least skilled people in our society have more trouble getting work the higher you make the minimum wage.”

UPDATE: Rick Weiland

Let me tie the early morning post in with this one by quoting the Democratic candidate for the South Dakota Senate seat, Rick Weiland:

The next time you hear another Big Money attack on organized labor, consider the source. These are the same people who legally change their business address to a foreign country to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who oppose allowing young Americans to refinance their old, high interest student loans. These are the same people who park their profits in overseas banks instead of investing in America.

The only way we can win in November is to hold them accountable.

For my part, I will continue to work as hard as I know how to take our country back from Big Money.