Helping (?) those poor fast-food workers
The Talk of the Day blog features a lively conversation about the minimum-wage ballot proposal, and I continue to get a lot of email about my columns on the subject. (Read them here and here and here.) One correspondent, Harold, takes issue with some of my arguments. He writes:
You seem to believe that all of the low wage jobs are taken by rich kids. I guess you go to different fast food places than I do. The trash collectors are well disguised if they are rich kids.
Harold also throws in a shot against big business:
It might work better if modern corporations distributed profits more appropriately instead of allowing top management to pig out because of interlocking boards of directors and do-nothing regulators controlled by management dollars.
I never said that “rich kids” held most minimum-wage jobs, although I did point out that many, even most, low-wage workers come from households that are NOT below the poverty line. However, Harold’s comments raise some interesting points. If he is seeing disadvantaged young people in minimum-wage jobs, they’re the people who are most likely to lose if we push the minimum too high. Here’s how I responded to Harold:
In those fast-food places you frequent, do you see the same kids cleaning up trash who were there five years ago? If not, what happens to them? The statistics show most people work in a minimum-wage job for a relatively short period of time and then move up to something that pays better. When they took that first job, they lacked skills, but after working for awhile, they became more valuable to the restaurant or to some other employer. They learned to show up on time, they learned how to deal with customers, they learned a lot of tangible and intangible skills that are rewarded in the job market. Make it more expensive for employers to hire unskilled workers, and some of those kids won’t get the chance to climb on that first rung of the ladder. The restaurant will assign managers to do some of the cleaning duties, or outsource the work (to a contractor who may clean three restaurants, not just one, in a single shift) or just relax its standards.Rail all you want against ”modern corporations,” but most minimum wage workers don’t work for Exxon or Wal-Mart. They work for small businesses — neighborhood restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and the like. Those are the people who will be squeezed by Prop B, and they’ll have an even tougher time competing with the Wal-Marts and McDonaldses of the world.Thanks for writing.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Productivity gains and record profits have come on the backs of the average wage earner. It seems only the corporations and their shareholders are profiting from their hard work. If they aren’t willing to share the wealth with their workers, then unfortunately it has to be legislated. I have no sympathy for greedy corporations who won’t do the right thing.
Who it will hurt is the small business owner who creates most of the new jobs. Be careful of the law of unintended consequences. This will ultimately hurt job creation. But at least the people who find jobs will be paid a decent wage.