Word: waging
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Minor- league owners score grand- slam returns. -- Pressure for a minimum- wage hike. -- Japan' s growing investment in Australia...
That situation has outraged labor leaders, who have pressured Congress into considering a major revision of the minimum-wage law. Similar bills, introduced in the Senate by Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy and in the House by California Democrat Augustus Hawkins, would increase the base pay of American workers to $4.55 by 1991 and then automatically peg it to 50% of the national average wage (currently $9.28). The Democratic Party platform adopted in Atlanta last week calls for a minimum that rises automatically with inflation. But lawmakers have bogged down in a debate over whether the move would help or hurt...
...base rate would eliminate 600,000 jobs, cost consumers $13 billion more a year and add $2 billion to the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that 500,000 jobs would be lost. But Economist F. Gerard Adams of the University of Pennsylvania argues that a higher minimum wage would cost no more than 100,000 jobs by 1990. Reason: most unskilled workers would be able to find jobs because of current labor shortages...
Another point of contention is that many minimum-wage earners come from middle-class homes and are working for pocket change. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 4.7 million minimum wagers. Heads of households represent less than 25% of the total, and teenagers 37%. Says William Dunkelberg, dean of the School of Business Administration at Temple University in Philadelphia: "There are better ways to help the poor than with the shotgun approach of a minimum wage...
Moreover, there are not so many low-wage jobs as there used to be. In today's postindustrial economy, the majority of positions require more education and skill than ever before. As a result, the number of minimum-wage earners has dropped from 12.8% of all hourly workers in 1981 to 7.9% in 1987. Yet these jobs represent stepping-stones for many people trying to climb out of the economic underclass. A hike in the minimum wage, many economists point out, would eliminate opportunities for people who are less well educated or just entering the job market. Low-paying training...