Fight for 15 on Last Legs

The widely popular minimum wage labor movement “Fight for $15” has garnered support from Democratic lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Bernie Sanders. The rationale is that minimum wage employees rely on their salary to live, support a family or pay back a college loan and therefore should be high enough to be considered a living wage. Cities with progressive-minded mayors, like Seattle and San Francisco, approved the $15 minimum wage, double the federal minimum of $7.25. Today independent studies by Washington University and the website Yelp show that forcing an increase in the minimum wage on businesses was a mistake and actually lowered overall wages that are being paid to all employees. The money to pay the higher minimum wage employees had to come from somewhere and the majority of business owners merely cut the hours of existing minimum wage employees or laid off workers to pay for the increases.

The author of a University of Washington study concluded that Fight for $15 actually did more harm to minimum wage employees than good. The increase in the minimum wage resulted in a 9% drop in hours worked and reduced average earnings by $125 per month. In addition to working fewer hours, other Yelp studies found “a spike in closures for median-rated San Francisco restaurants following an increase in that city’s minimum wage.”

The Fight for $15 movement garnered media attention when in a series of “one day strikes” fast-food employees walked out of their restaurants in the middle of the work day, during busy lunch time hours to do maximum damage to the business, as a sign of protest at what their leaders say is an unlivable minimum wage. It is not uncommon for 500 to 1000 workers to spontaneously walk out from their place of employment for the day. Like everything else in our free market economy, when the government legislates additional expenses on a business, like higher minimum wages or additional regulations, those new expenses are eventually paid for by the people that the legislation was originally intended to help.

Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelsaltsman/2017/06/26/new-report-marks-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-fight-for-15/#7ee4230ef455

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/31/seius-fight-for-15-flop-despite-spending-90-million.html