Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s more than a bit funny that the mad socialist, Bernie Sanders is, himself, feeling the “Bern.” Then, Socialism is great fuel and hypocrisy and equally good accelerant. Bernie’s self-immolation was almost guaranteed. 😉

What’s happened is that Bernie’s campaign staff – which unionized – is in extended arguments with their “management” over the pay and benefits that his campaign’s field staffers get. The staffers have complained that their salaries of $36,000 annually ends up being less than $15.00 / hour when the numbers of hours a week they work on average are factored in.

A letter that the campaign’s union planned to send to Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir which read in part that workers “cannot be expected to build the largest grassroots organizing program in American history while making poverty wages. Given our campaign’s commitment to fighting for a living wage of at least $15.00 an hour, we believe it is only fair that the campaign would carry through this commitment to its own field team.”

The letter states that field organizers are working at least 60 hours a week, which lowers the average per hour pay to $13 an hour.

“Many field staffers are barely managing to survive financially, which is severely impacting our team’s productivity and morale. Some field organizers have already left the campaign as a result,” the letter said.

Even a proposal from the campaign director, Faiz Shakir that recommended raising their salaries to $42,000 per annum was rejected, largely because the proposal didn’t also include Bernie paying for 100% of the staffers’ healthcare costs.

Yep. Ol’ Bernie really should have known that, if he’s going to run on forcing higher wages for low-end personnel and free healthcare for all, he was going to have to fut the bill for them same for the partisans actually working for him.

Oh! And just to add more fuel to his own pyre, Bernie’s response to this rebellion as of July 19, 2019 was to reduce staff hours to ensure everyone makes $15 an hour.

Tags: #BernieBros | #BernOuts | America | Bernie | Bernie Sanders | Economics | Humor | Hypocrisy | Irony | Leftists | Liberals | Minimum Wage | Politics | Progressives | Sarcasm | Socialists | Wages

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 21st, 2019 at 6:27 am and is filed under 2020 Elections, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Let me start off with the simple statement that America has 10’s of millions of good, productive, workers, though fewer as a percentage of the population than before. These largely unsung heroes, doing jobs both clean and dirty, have always been the backbone of American greatness.

However, they may no longer be the norm…

Let’s face it; the Sisyphean “traji-comedy” above is almost an iconic representation of those members of the American workforce that we do hear about, the ones clamoring for a higher minimum and/or other privileges that neither their ability nor willingness to work or the jobs they perform have earned.

Tags: America | Employment | Humor | Intelligence | Minimum Wage | Sarcasm | Society | Stupidity | Wages | Work | Work Ethic

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2016 at 6:58 am and is filed under Humor, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Truly, there’s no hypocrisy quite like organized hypocrisy, as the Los Angeles, CA cells of the labor unions have just shown the world. After months of assaulting businesses that were against increasing the minimum wage to $15 /Hr, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — the local cell of the AFL-CIO — now, on the eve of LA’s adopting the increase, demands that union shops be exempted from the minimum wage increase.

While shocking in the arrogant overtness of these grifters’ demand, the demand for an escape clause for the unions is hardly shocking in its substance. While the ever-credulous “sheeple” have been gulled into believing that unions’ battles to raise the minimum wage are motivated by concern for low-income Americans, reasonable and more informed Americans know that it’s actually all about increasing the power and membership of the unions and, thereby, increasing the monies that they take from the workers now beholden to them.

Any such exemption would allow the unions greater strength when it comes to infiltrating various workplaces. They would be able to tell businesses such as fast food chains, hotels, and hospitals that if they agree to allowing the unions to take over the labor pool, their labor costs will be substantially lower because they will be forced by law to pay their unskilled workers the new, higher minimum wage.

Truly, there’s no hypocrisy quite like organized hypocrisy. Big Labor cares about its own coffers, not those of the workers.

Tags: America | California | Employment | Grifters | Labor | Labor Unions | Los Angeles | Minimum Wage | Politics | Wages

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2015 at 8:39 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I’ve said before that raising the minimum wage in order to provide the “poor” with the material standard of living they feel entitled to is a plan that will backfire, causing incalculable financial harm to the very people it’s meant to provide for.

Well, it appears that, if you’re one of those who’ve been screaming to make $15 / hr to flip burgers, your future is now. McDonald’s is piloting a new, cashier-free kiosk system in several major US cities after having great success with them in Europe. And this is just McDonald’s; others are moving this way as well.

What is as telling as it is interesting is that, despite the hype, that these kiosks were developed to reduce labor costs, they weren’t. They were developed in order to speed up the ordering process and overall improve the customer experience…because the workers, who now want more money, couldn’t or wouldn’t do job as well as a self-service kiosk.

And the above are just about the cashiers. Other automated systems are in development or early pilot to completely automate the fast food cooking process. Hence, soon there may be very few people employed in the fast food industry at all.

Yes, to all those who’ve pushed, and pushed, and putsched to jack up the minimum wage I say, your future is now and it is bleak.

Tags: Automation | Economics | Employment | Jobs | Minimum Wage | Politics | Robotics | Robots | Society | Unemployment | Wages

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2015 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There will always be issues, often severe ones, when anything is used in a manner that was never intended to be used in.

Fast Food Was Never Intended To Sustain Someone Indefinitely

Fast food is perfect example and one that is very timely at this moment in history. It was never intended to be mainstay of anyone’s diet and its misuse as such is the reason behind the Liberals’ and Progressives’ complaints about obesity, food deserts, and other such things. Similarly, fast food jobs were never intended to sustain a person economically for any great length of time and their misuse is at the heart of the Liberals’ and Progressives’ assault to increase the minimum wage.

Truly though, the issue of minimum wage and its use and misuse has two disparate vectors, a legitimate issue and an illegitimate construction.

A Legitimate Issue

To be fair, under the influence of Obamanomics the demographics of who’s working in the fast food industry or otherwise earning only minimum has changed greatly since 2008. There are more and more men and women, previously well-employed, now being forced by circumstance to attempt to support themselves and often their families through minimum wage jobs.

An Illegitimate Construction

Irrespective of just who is now working for minimum wage, a huge underlying problem with it now is the Liberals’ and Progressives’ construction that minimum wage should be a wage upon which someone can live well. This in turn reflects their beliefs that the poor are somehow more downtrodden than is rationally acceptable. They truly seem to believe that the poor should have a standard of living that is similar to that which is enjoyed by the more productive and successful.

~*~

Also remember that this misuse, if allowed to continue and expand, will just make things worse. It will both reduce the number of minimum wage jobs available as employers adapt and raise the prices of many basic products and services, thereby destroying the increase in workers’ buying power that increasing the minimum wage is intended to accomplish.

Tags: America | Economy | Employment | Fast Food | Jobs | Minimum Wage | Politics | Society | Unemployment

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2015 at 10:13 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.