Category Archives: living wage

Stealing Wages, not Sustainable

by

Capitalism is thievery, even by its own laws, but some lowlife bosses are not satisfied with the ill-gotten gains and unfair advantages that the law already provides. No, some bosses not only exploit their workers, filling their baskets with the majority of the fruit that a worker produces, they also coerce or trick workers into working hours for free or accepting less than the already woefully inadequate minimum wage.

This wage thievery hurts “honest” and “hard working” small business owners as well, by giving an unfair advantage to the lowlife pick pockets who take money from their workers’ paychecks.  The thieves can lower their “operating expenses” and undercut their honest competitors. So “honest” bosses are getting screwed too while lowlife bosses can thrive.

Any business which doesn’t a pay living wage has no right to exist. They are a detriment to society.

But bosses who run businesses and steal from their workers already meager earnings are criminals and should be put in jail. And I don’t mean Club Fed type country clubs.  Lets’ take a page Lisbeth Salander and tattoo “this asshole steals wages from poor workers” across their chest and back and maybe on their foreheads too. Wage stealing bosses live in the same hole as pedaphiles, along with scabs and Pinkertons and Eric Prince.


There is no doubt that all wage labor is wage slavery under the menace of capitalism, but since we still have a fair amount of work to do before we are ready to challenge the rulers for control of society, bills like NJ Senate bill S1790 and Assembly bill A2903 are a baby step and offer workers some cheesecloth like armor of protection.  We reiterate the best way to fight for workers’ rights is to organize in the workplace and at the point of production. Building egalitarian structures in an IWW rank and file union is the real hope for change.  But if this proposed wage theft law in NJ can relieve some of the suffering of so many mostly low wage workers than we support it and call on the legislature to pass it immediately.

Wage theft, in the US, is a huge criminal enterprise.  The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the wage theft that revolves around the minimum wage alone is $15 billion a year. That’s more than “shoplifting” and if bosses paid a living wage “shoplifting” would most likely be even less of a problem.

,All threads connect in the fabric of capitalist oppression, and when we pull one, wage theft, we find that it is tied to another, low wages.  Laws that regulate the level of theft tolerated are not a bad thing, but we need to rid ourselves of exploitative social relations entirely. All we need is the strategy and the movement to start to make it happen.

A Living Wage is a Requirement of a Sustainable Ecconomy

by

We need $15 an hour, and we need it now, not five years from now like most democrat politicians want. A sustainable economy requires wages that sustain a healthy,productive and rewarding life.

We shouldn’t walk into the the bosses’ office with our hats in our hands, nope. We need to walk in with our fists in the air. We have the power. All we lack is the organization. No small thing for sure, but easily attainable if we work together.

But that’s our problem. We workers let the bosses divide us by nation, race, gender, orientation. We let them divide us based on how much money we earn or the perception that “skills” are what should determine the value of labor. But the idea of skilled vs. unskilled workers is just another wedge driven through our unity. It is based on the false perception that there is an unlimited amount of jobs for “skilled” workers and that all an individual needs to do is get the right “skills.” This is just another trick of the neoliberal pseudo economists and lackey pundits.

The bottom line is this. Workers create the value and thereby the wealth in the economy, but because bosses are greedy and often too incompetent to make profit and still pay workers a wage that allows them to meet living expenses, many workers are forced into a situation where they can barely survive. In the upside down world of capitalist economy the bosses are turned into the producers of value and labor is an “expense.” But if all the bosses disappeared tomorrow the economy would continue to operate. Their demise might cause a bump or two as workers reorganized our work places without the boss, but we would carry on. If all the workers disappeared, however, the engine would seize and the profit would stop. When it comes right down to it most bosses, and all of the big bosses, are little more than parasites living off blood of workers, sucking the life out of us so they can consume far more than they need.

There is no need to detail the corporate profits accumulated by the one percent or more accurately the the tenth of one percent over the last forty years. They have made unfathomable measures of wealth, while most of the rest of us have had to strap flippers on our feet to simply stay afloat and avoid breathing in the water that presses against our throats.

We don’t have to accept this. We are the many and they are the few. We need to organize, to see through the bosses’ lies that divide us and demand our share of the wealth we create: the vast majority of it. We can get  $15, a living wage and helluva lot more.