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CANNERY WAGES
Current minimum wage for cannery workers stand at $4.76 per hour - a 44% increase since the mandatory wage hike law went into effect in 2007. The last wage hike for all industries in the territory was 2009.
Based on questionnaire responses about workers’ wages as of June 2013, the future minimum wage increases would affect the wages of 92 percent of the current workers in the canning industry by 2018, when the minimum wage reaches $5.76 per hour, according to the report.
Based on the wages workers currently earn, minimum wage increases would increase the average annual cost per worker in 2018 by an average annual cost of $1,723 per worker.
EMPLOYER ACTIONS
Two of the three employers in the tuna canning industry in American Samoa reported that they had taken cost-cutting actions from June 2010 to June 2013 including labor- and cost-saving strategies and reduced overtime, according to the draft, which didn’t identify the companies by name, but Samoa News understands GAO is referring to StarKist Samoa and the can manufacturing plant, Impress Samoa.
The third employer, which is just beginning operations in American Samoa considered the questions — on the impact of wage hikes to the cannery — not applicable. (GAO is referring to Tri Marine International’s local Samoa Tuna Processors Inc.)
The two employers attributed all but one of their actions to a moderate or large extent to minimum wage increases, it says and noted that in addition to minimum wage increases, these two employers also attributed their actions to a moderate or large extent to increased utility and material costs.
"Two of three employers stated that they planned in the next 18 months to introduce labor- and cost-saving strategies, delay business expansion, relocate business, and reduce overtime hours," GAO said. "The two employers attributed all of these plans to a moderate or large extent to the minimum wage increases, but also to increased utility and material costs and business factors."
http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2011…
In 2007, the United States government imposed a new federal minimum wage on American Samoa and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI.) While this increase was well intended—a response to the islanders' wages being lower than that of their mainland counterparts—the results have been nothing less than devastating.
According to a new report from the United States General Accountability Office (GAO), the 19 percent decline in employment in the workforce that American Samoa has experienced since 2008 was in large part the result of imposing minimum hourly wages across various industries. The island’s primary industry is tuna fish canning, with major employers Chicken of the Sea closing and Starkist announcing huge layoffs. In 2008 the number of workers in the canneries was slightly more than 19,000 but has since fallen to 15,400.
$15 Now not $11.75 (adjusted) in 2022!
It's a cautionary proposal. After all, if wages go up and the the economy doesn't crash and burn, big business interests and their friends at the New York Times (and the Stranger), will be disappointed,
But what do I know? I am one of those crazy zealots who believes we should raise the wage already.
Apparently either Egan hasn't read about the Living Wage movement (110+ municipalities around the country, over the last 10 years, none of which have shown loss of jobs), or he's influenced by Balter. It's hard to think the latter, because his books show him to be a pretty smart and sensitive guy.
The american somoa canning industry example is a really poor one. Its not a good analogy at all. A cannery closed there, eliminating 800 jobs, and increasing unemployment by 20%!!! That means that there were 4000 jobs to begin with in the whole place. We might as well start looking to the lessons of Duvall. Oh wait, no, Duvall is 50% too big...
A recent UC Berkeley study found that increases in the minimum wage only effected prices at restaurants. Anecdotally in SeaTac after the raise to $15 one car park raised their cost from $14/day to $14.50. Even at fancy restaurants, an opponent of $15 said he'd have to raise average dinner costs from $97 to $110. Utility workers already make more than $15 your electrical and gas bills are much more of a function of resource costs. As far as rent, it is already too damn high, but rates usually rise at ~3-10%, so in comparison 60% seems like a win. I could see an influx of new workers to the city, but that would only increase demand, making the local economy even healthier.
From 15Now.org: "
When the minimum wage was first instituted, and every time it has since been raised, there have been dire predictions that it would cause an immediate and steep increase in prices. In reality, these apocalyptic predictions have never been borne out.
A 1999 study found that a $1 increase in minimum wage to McDonald’s workers would add only 2 cents to the cost of a hamburger. If Walmart passed the entire costs of the new $12.50/hour minimum wage in Washington D.C. to consumers, the cost to the average Walmart shopper is estimated to increase by 1.1% per shopping trip.
But why should that be necessary? Instead, the increased costs of paying their workers should come from reducing their already extravagant profits.
links:
http://seattletimes.wpengine.netdna-cdn.…
http://www.1seattle.org/job-creation.htm…
http://nelp.3cdn.net/fb518f3647002218a7_…
http://gayleturner.net/MinWageRebutNFIB-…
http://www.socialistalternative.org/publ…
http://www.epi.org/blog/every-day-lowwag…
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/retail/b…
Every single time anyone has proposed to increase the minimum wage anywhere, businesses gnash their teeth and predict the sky will fall, prices will spike, they'll have to lay off half their workers, or they'll go broke. Every. Single. Time.
Do you know how many times any of those dire predictions has come true? Exactly zero.
So Egan is half right. Yes, Seattle should become an example... and example of raising the worst paid workers out of poverty without making them wait 7 fucking years for it.
*MasterPark charges, taxes, and fees include a 'Living Wage' surcharge of 99 cents per day. This is due to the new $15 per hour minimum wage requirement for certain businesses in SeaTac. The surcharge covers a portion of the resulting increase in operating costs.
http://www.masterparking.com/php/seattle…
Until then, his condescending words of warning to those struggling to make ends meet on minimum and low wages is meaningless, self-serving bullshit.
What would his advice have been to those people featured in his book on the Dust Bowl - quit your whining, here's a spoon, enjoy the sand until we decide that you deserve better?
And, would his advice on race and equality have been - don't rush civil rights, let it evolve on the majority's time table, not yours, they know what's best for you?
If Mr. Egan wants to be an apologist for the owner and upper classes who have built their fortunes exploiting and stealing from the lower classes, I'm sure they'll gladly give him an audience...perhaps, even patronage for having warm, soft lips.
We don't need Timothy Egan to tell the rest of us that we better know our place in this world and be careful we don't make Massa angry with us.
...and we don't particularly care to suffer those shared sentiments expressed by proxy from our cowardly neighbors. Capisce?
Instead, he writes from the assumption that the world as HE has known it that favors middle-class, white men with money, a higher education and the requisite successful career is the world as it has been, should be and always will be.
Well, aren't you precious, Tim.
To him, employing a worker is akin to paying the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn in suburbia...in the 1950s and 60s...on black and white TV...with Lassie keeping an eye on him.
It's time to flip this failed trickle down mentality on its ass.
Most workers contribute far, far more value to a business than will ever be reflected in their paychecks. In fact, the profits taken out of the business by owners, banks and investors is largely, if not entirely, created by the life and work of the workers.
The fact that you are given a privileged access to capital by the gatekeepers of capital, namely banks and investors, does not make you better and more deserving than your workers to profit from their lives and work.
Stop telling workers to wait for the owners to decide whether they're worthy of a living wage, Tim.
We, our lives and our work are not property for you to price and sell as it serves you.
Learn to share before the winds of change sweep you into history...just like your ideals and self-serving worldview from the bygone era of black and white television.