Obama weighing executive action on minimum wage?

[ProSense]

Obama weighing executive action on minimum wage?

By Greg Sargent

Here’s some welcome news. At his meeting with Democratic Senators last night, President Obama indicated that he is giving serious consideration to executive action designed to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors...Proponents want to see this executive action happen on the merits — they believe it could impact as many as two million employees of federal contractors, and would help the economy. But they also believe such action could give a boost of momentum to the push for a minimum wage hike for all American workers, which obviously would require Congressional approval, but is currently facing Republican opposition.

Senator Bernie Sanders told me in an interview that the president took the idea very seriously when asked about it last night.

“I am very pleased that the president and members of his administration indicated they’re giving very serious consideration to this proposal,” Sanders said. “The president is weighing the pros and cons in terms of the impact on the overall debate.”

Asked what “cons” the president had identified, Sanders declined to say, noting that this had been a private meeting. But it seems fair to speculate that Obama, like some others, could be worried that raising the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors could be counter-productive, sapping momentum in the broader debate over whether to raise the minimum wage for all workers, by allowing opponents to argue that some have already been helped.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/16/obama-weighing-executive-action-on-minimum-wage/

[FreakinDJ]

1. $10.10 is still not enough

[ProSense]

2. It should

"$10.10 is still not enough"

...be higher, but that is the proposal being pushed in Congress.

Welfare for Walmart?

Wal-mart pays its employees so little that many of the low-wage workers must rely on food stamps to feed their families and Medicaid to pay doctors when their children get sick. “Do you think the wealthiest family in this country should have large numbers of employees that depend on Medicaid,” Sen. Bernie Sanders asked a panel of experts at a Joint Economic Committee hearing Thursday. “That is corporate welfare of the worst kind,” said Robert Reich, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor. The hearing was called to look at the economic impact of raising the federal minimum wage. Sanders is cosponsor of a bill that would boost the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from the current level of $7.25.

Watch Sanders at the Joint Economic Committee hearing

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/welfare-for-walmart

[ProSense]

3. Kick for

doomed!

[ZombieHorde]

4. We would be extremely pissed if a Republican President used

an executive action to lower the minimum wage, but I still hope President Obama raises it. Could easily be a dangerous precedent, but it would help so many people.

[ProSense]

5. Conversely,

"We would be extremely pissed if a Republican President used an executive action to lower the minimum wage, but I still hope President Obama raises it. Could easily be a dangerous precedent, but it would help so many people. "

...do you think it would be prudent for a Republican President to use an "executive action" to hurt millions of people?

An August 2013 NYT editorial:

The Government as a Low-Wage Employer

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

In 1965, in a nation torn by racial strife, President Johnson signed an executive order mandating nondiscrimination in employment by government contractors. Now, as President Obama has observed, the nation is divided by a different threat: widening income inequality. He could respond much as Mr. Johnson did — with an executive order aimed, this time, at raising the pay of millions of poorly paid employees of government contractors.


<...>

Many laws and executive actions, mostly from the 1930s and 1960s, require fair pay for employees of federal contractors. But over time, those protections have been eroded by special-interest exemptions, complex contracting processes and lax enforcement. A new executive order could ensure that the awarding of contracts is based on the quality of jobs created, challenging the notion that the best contractor is the one with the lowest labor costs.

Mr. Obama also could tell federal agencies to conduct reviews of contracts to see if the work should be done in-house. There is compelling evidence that using private-sector contractors is often costlier than using government employees, even when contractors pay workers little.

Nearly 50 years after one executive order helped to end discrimination in government contracting, another one is needed to help ensure fair pay in that same sector.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/opinion/the-government-as-a-low-wage-employer.html?_r=0

<...>

So an executive action by President Obama is especially appealing. And while the President cannot unilaterally increase the minimum wage for everyone, he can change federal contracting procedures to favor contractors that pay their employees enough to live and raise a family on. This week, the New York Times published a powerful editorial calling on the President to do it. Drawing on a recent Demos study of low-wage contract employees and other federally-supported workers, as well as research from the National Employment Law Project, the Times made the case that:

Nearly 50 years after. . . President Johnson signed an executive order mandating nondiscrimination in employment by government contractors… (President Obama) could respond much as Mr. Johnson did — with an executive order aimed, this time, at raising the pay of millions of poorly paid employees of government contractors. . . challenging the notion that the best contractor is the one with the lowest labor costs.

Over at the Roosevelt Institute, Senior Fellow Richard Kirsch agrees, pointing out that “In the 1930s, and again in the 1960s, the federal government helped raise wages for workers. Congress passed laws and presidents issued executive orders that required businesses with federal contracts to pay their workers their industry’s prevailing wage. That meant better pay.”

Jared Bernstein, former economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, says this is an “an executive order whose time has come.” And while Dr. Bernstein apologizes for bothering the President while he’s on vacation, the truth is that many of the federal contracting jobs in question don’t come with paid vacation days anymore than they pay a living wage.

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http://www.demos.org/blog/8/16/13/yes-he-can-momentum-grows-executive-order-raise-wages-low-paid-contract-workers

[ProSense]

6. Kick! n/t