Unions in California exempt themselves from 15 dollar minimum wage hike..... of course they did....

2aguy

Diamond Member
Jul 19, 2014
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Yes......left wing regressive drones believe whatever the left wing lords and masters tell them...even as they are getting screwed over......

Apparently the champions of the 15 dollar minimum wage in California....unions...have created carve outs for their crony socialist buddies.....

California unions arrange to cut their own members out of wage increases - Hot Air

We’ll circle back to that in a moment. But first we need to tackle the mystery of why some of the people who are actually complaining the most are union workers themselves. There are raises being given out to be sure, but some of these folks aren’t getting a slice of the pie. (LA Times)

[Bill] Martinez, a 53-year-old bellhop, has hauled tourists’ luggage across the flagstone plaza of the Sheraton Universal in Studio City for two decades. He said he was excited after the council’s vote to raise the minimum hourly wage at large hotels to $15.37, which he expected to boost his paycheck by 71%.

He soon found out he wouldn’t be getting a raise after all.

Under an obscure provision of the city’s wage hike, unionized hotels were granted an exemption allowing them to pay their employees less. The result is that Martinez, who pays $56.50 every month for membership in the hotel workers union Unite Here, now makes less than those doing the same job in non-union workplaces.

“That’s what really makes me mad,” Martinez said. “I just wanted to be treated equal. Don’t exempt us, because we’re the ones paying union dues.”

So why isn’t Bill getting some of that sweet $15.37 per hour action? He’s a member of the union who worked to have the higher wage mandated.

But what Bill didn’t know was that there was a loophole in the rules which said that hotels with union labor didn’t have to pay the higher wage unless they felt like it. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.)

As the Times article admits, this is rather counterintuitive. The raison d’etre of unions is supposedly to arrange better conditions, compensation and benefits for their members, so why they would agree to that deal doesn’t jump out at you.

But the reality is that not all of the hotels are unionized. The ones who run open shops fall under the new arrangement and have to pay their workers significantly higher wages. So how do they get out of this sudden spike in labor costs which could put them at a disadvantage with their competitors? (Cue the Jeopardy music…)

They can just unionize their work force.

It’s really a genius maneuver if you think about it. Getting a raise for some of the workers in the city who already belong to your union doesn’t really translate into that much more money in dues because they only collect a small percentage of the increase. But if you can suddenly enlist the workers at a whole raft of new businesses into your organization you get a piece of all their paychecks. It’s the perfect plan, really.
 
The unions are using 15 dollar minimum wage to force businesses to unionize...and they do it by screwing over the very people they claim to want to help......

But union dues rule over everything else.....
 
I don't think it's entirely that... I think it has a bit of "Hey, don't blame us - it's not our fault. wink wink nudge nudge" in it as well.
There probably isn't a single union job that pays minimum wage in the first place, so the law wouldn't even affect them negatively.
Additionally, there's the union contracts that base wages on the minimum wage. Min. wage goes up, so does their pay.
 

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