A higher minimum
a SUIT column by Chris Jungle

As everybody celebrates the joys of labor, the summer winding down, the beginning of the football season, and the kids finally having to go back to school, there's one thing that stands out as significant. After Labor Day, the minimum wage is finally getting bumped up from $4.75 to $5.15. While that won't make a difference to most of America, it matters to the people most of America doesn't care about.

When I got out of high school, I worked my first fast food job, and while I won't say the company, supposedly all of the chicken I cooked was finger lickin' good. Back then, minimum wage was $3.75--which was exactly what they paid me. Since I worked seventy hours in the two week pay periods, it came out to less than two hundred fifty dollars after taxes, so for working pretty close to full time, I made about five hundred bucks a month.

Some people might think working a minimum wage job means these jobs must obviously be the easiest to work, but that is a myth of gigantic proportions. Not only did I have to cook chicken at the fine poultry establishment, but I also had to deal with moody pressure cookers that spit hot grease, cashiers demanding more product, and customers who thought the hot n' spicy chicken tasted "funny." Vats of hot oil had to be drained, cleaned, and put back in every night. Like most jobs, even a seasoned professional has a slip up. Our oldest and finest veteran got oil splashed near his eye, many people had burn marks on their arms from the portable chicken tray heaters, and I had a chunk from two fingers extra crispied near my knuckles. For my mishap, they just put some hydrogen peroxide on my fingers and put me back to work, so I didn't even get any time off. Of course, who would be fool enough to ask for time off when you're only making five hundred bucks a month?

Companies that pay minimum wages to employees are doing it by law. If they could pay employees less, they would. Restaurants don't have to pay their wait people minimum wage, so they don't. The wait staffs usually get about two and half bucks an hour and hope for some solid tips. The reason the government has to come out and officially raise minimum wage every few years is that most companies won't do it on their own.

All this fodder about minimum wage hurting businesses is just a bunch of bull. If a company can't afford to raise everybody's wages fifty cents an hour it shouldn't be in business in the first place. Just close up shop if you can't handle it, so the employees can go find a job that has a chance of a pay raise. Besides, raises in minimum wage aren't for the company, they're for the workers. If I was still working that chicken job, working the same hours and doing the same job would get me about two hundred more dollars a month. Anyone who has had to live poorly knows that seven hundred dollars a month is a much better life than five hundred. Of course, it still isn't that great.

To be honest, I haven't had to work a minimum wage job in four years, but it's nice to know if all of the good job prospects crumble, the worst paying jobs are getting a little better. That's what raises in minimum wage are all about. Making the bottom of the barrel tastes a little better. It's not about sucking away company profit, or tinkering with the economy, or giving a reason to raise prices on goods and services.

Living a minimum wage lifestyle stinks. I'll be honest about it. It's busting your tail for the majority of your waking hours just to have the privilege of living on your own, buying your own food, and watching the television you bought. It is a sorry existence, but at least you make enough to tell everyone to leave you alone because you work and pay social security tax like everybody else.

So since everybody is gung ho about Labor Day, firing up the grill, having picnics, lighting fireworks, and celebrating how great it is to have a three day weekend, save a beer for the ones you don't think about--the minimum wage folks. Of course since they got a pay raise themselves, they might even bring their own beer to the party. And the bottom of the barrel gets a little bit sweeter.

Chris Jungle gets paid $7.50 an hour at his job and but gets an extra 60 cents for working nights and an extra 90 cents for working weekends.

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