More Summer Fest Silliness
We’re still waiting to hear a reason why “seasonal” employees, like those who work at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, should be exempted from the city’s living wage law, other than that these workers should be discriminated against because of their age and family status — or as Summer Fest board member Peter Schork puts it, “We’re talking about 16- to 25-year-olds, seasonal employees, not heads of household.” (Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether city living wage laws are a good idea at all — we think they generally are, but there are far better arguments for getting rid of the laws altogether than there are for making them apply selectively.)
The controversy is pure, vintage Ann Arbor. A2 wants to be at the forefront of progressive labor legislation. But it also wants to play host to the enriching multi-culti delights of Cape Verdean blues, Latin jazz, rootsy Americana and Australian pole-dancing acrobatics. And now these two objectives are colliding just because of some “temporary” residents working “seasonal” jobs who probably don’t even listen to Prairie Home Companion.
As Chris Easthope said at last week’s City Council meeting, “It’s unfa-a-i-i-r!” (Inflection ours.)
It would seem to me that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The city should lead by example by paying the living wage it demands the other businesses to pay.
posted by Tit for Tat on March 4th, 2008 at 1:45 pm“The controversy is pure, vintage Ann Arbor. A2 wants to be at the forefront of progressive labor legislation. But it also wants to play host to the enriching multi-culti delights…”
*laugh* Indeed.
But really, let’s not kid ourselves. A2 wants to have the _reputation_ of being at the forefront of progressive everything, but it also wants to have the _reputation_ of being a multi-cultural arts center.
…and for any normal well-guided endeavor, even those questionable agendae don’t need to conflict. If, however, you’re a member of the key de facto clique micro-economy that’s holding fast to the exorbitant profit margins that it’s felching out of its well-engineered reputations, well, something’s just got to give…
(No. Not bitter.)
posted by Earthshine on March 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pmWhen you force someone to work 35 hours per week at a $10 an hour job instead of 70 hours per week at two $5.50 an hour jobs, you cost that person $35 per week.
posted by A Different Jon on March 4th, 2008 at 2:23 pmYou also cost yourself 35 hours of labor.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pmIf, however, you’re a member of the key de facto clique micro-economy that’s holding fast to the exorbitant profit margins that it’s felching out of its well-engineered reputations,
Heh. I noticed they said that it would be okay to apply the living-wage laws to full-time employees. Don’t they have like 4 full-time employees? And why does it seem like everyone on their board also works for Surovell?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 4th, 2008 at 2:45 pmActually, since the city seems to exempt its own seasonal workers from the law, I don’t see why it’s unreasonable to extend this exemption to city contractors.
posted by jcp2 on March 4th, 2008 at 4:15 pmLet’s set aside the age of the hypothetical temporary workers who would be denied a living wage here. Anyone willing to sincerely argue that pouring beers, checking IDs, or performing similar labor is worth $10+ an hour (with health insurance), please do so now. I don’t believe it is, and that’s why I don’t have a problem with exempting Summer Fest temps from the ordinance–in much the same way that the city exempts its own seasonal employees, as seems reasonable to me.
posted by Jeff Dean on March 4th, 2008 at 8:03 pmPouring beers is worth more that $10 an hour if you’re a decent bartender (mostly tips). Cleaning vomit out of barrels is worth more than $10 an hour. Doing a shit-poor job of catching fakes and watching for minors sneaking into the beergarden while you’re under 21 yourself? Worth less than $10.
Having worked these jobs, there’s a labor force problem, in that anyone who can do about half of the jobs in a non-inept manner (”ept”?) is going to want more than $10 an hour to do so. So they find other jobs, most of which don’t include having drunk 40-year-olds hit on you while you drain wastewater. Or they take the jobs because of the other benefits offered, almost all of which are unofficial (drunken 40-year-olds plying you with liquor).
It’s the same problem that faces many small manufacturing or repair concerns—the skill and temperament required to do the job well is worth far more than what’s affordable for the business, so they go the other way and hire the shitheels for as little as humanly possible, and get what they pay for.
posted by js on March 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pmIt’s $10 something an hour without health insurance, or $8 something with. And as js points out, they’re doing some pretty undesirable jobs, like dealing with trash.
If we’re going to look at every job that’s subject to this law and decide whether it’s worth $10 an hour, that’s one thing. But right now the scrutiny is just for workers who are politically unpopular in this town because of their age.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 4th, 2008 at 8:38 pmAs I understand the original meaning of the term, a living wage is not a fixed number, as it is based on the amount of income necessary to provide the basic necessities for a family that are related to self-sufficiency. It would be related to the size and composition of the family for total income, with that total being split between all the income earners in the family. A sole income earner for a family with two adults and three children would necessitate a higher wage, while the same family with two income earners would have smaller wages for each individual wage earner, so long as the family total remained the same. A family of one would draw a lower wage than the total income for the family of five. In fact, if Summerfest employed individuals that were part of a family that were already self-sufficient, it could be argued that a living wage for that individual is zero!
Maybe the term “adjusted government contractor minimum wage law” is better. It doesn’t sound as compassionate as “living wage law”, but it’s closer to the truth.
posted by JCP2 on March 4th, 2008 at 9:21 pmNever mind, the latest News story says it is $10 with health insurance. Now I can’t remember where I saw that $8 figure.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 4th, 2008 at 11:19 pmJCP2, If I am reading you correctly you have at least one half of the idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Are you saying that that is what the Council had in mind when they passed this? If so it becomes untenable pretty quickly. Are you saying that if you had two families each with two adults and three children, all of comparable ages, however in one of the families one of the adults cannot work due to a disability. Is the single wage earning family due twice as much salary? What if those families have an elderly parent at home, are they due more salary in that case? And if so, then as soon as that elderly parent passes away are their salaries cut by 17% (valuing each person equally)?
The council should have thought this through when they passed the ‘Living Wage’ Law. They should not be in the business of now interpreting who deserves to be paid the Living Wage, and who should not. I assume a contractor to the city, brought on to help landscape a park for example, who may very well hire the same seasonal employees, is required to pay them based on the Living Wage Law (assuming the contract minimum is met). Deciding after the fact that ‘heads of households’ (and just what does that means for a 35 year-old living alone?) are more equal than 16 to 25 year-olds, for exactly the same work, is just wrong. Pointing out the obvious, this is only being discussed because the city is reluctant, once again, to walk their talk and follow the rules they have made the private sector follow.
If the city wants to revise the Living Wage Law so that it is only required when the employee is a head of a household, let them define what that means, write it up, and put it on the agenda for public debate; like any other piece of legislation.
posted by abc on March 5th, 2008 at 9:21 amI’m not sure JCP2 is actually arguing that that’s how a living wage should be legislated in practice. And yes, it would be pretty disastrous for non-heads-of-household, however that’s defined, as well as working women (someone might as well stay home if your salary goes down every time a member of your household gets a job.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 5th, 2008 at 9:47 amI know several 25 year olds that have children and are the heads of their household. They live and work in Ann Arbor. I became the head of my household at 22. What the hell is Schork talking about?
posted by sherry on March 5th, 2008 at 10:27 amIn contrast, I was a teen, and then twenty something year-old, who worked and saved to pay my way through college. The assumption is that 16 to 25 year-olds don’t need or deserve money; doesn’t all of their money just go to beer? Or maybe its, “aren’t all of these kids living off their wealthy parents and just looking for play money.” It seems quite cynical to me to interpret that this group of *adults* is to be paid differently based on the assumption that their labors are gratuitous and that their needs are less than other’s.
posted by abc on March 5th, 2008 at 11:00 amDon’t they have like 4 full-time employees? And why does it seem like everyone on their board also works for Surovell?
Ha! Well caught. Again, we have, as you put it, pure Ann Arbor: “We shall push the envelope of all of the world’s most progressive and liberal initiatives! Well, except for any of those that might eat into profits…”
posted by Earthshine on March 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am(oops… tried to quote you just above with “cite” tags — didn’t work. Sorry…)
posted by Earthshine on March 5th, 2008 at 11:43 amThe discussion of age does bring up a problem…however the intention of this change isn’t really so much about the age. It’s about the fact these jobs last 4 weeks. If you can have a job for four weeks a year as your only job, you probably don’t need the city’s living wage law. If so the wage would need to be about 10-thousand dollars a week or so, to make it so you could live in A2 on this job.
As for the comment about bartenders and people who clean up crap deserving more money because of the type of job they have. All I can say is most all jobs get paid an inverse to their actual worth to society. Why do douchebag lawyers and consultants make infinately more than janitors, garbage men, and teachers. Society needs the later and would be better off with much fewer of the former, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Not even if A2’s living wage law is applied to people who have a job for four weeks a year.
posted by Andy on March 5th, 2008 at 2:58 pmabc,
I was not trying to advocate for Karl Marx, as we know how that all turned out. I was just commenting on the original idea behind the term “living wage” as a social construct, which was the total income needed for a family unit to be economically self-sufficient. The way the term is used in legislation is contrary to that original idea, as the living wage laws used a fixed number that is not at all related to each family unit’s economic situation. The number used in Ann Arbor’s ordinance is likely derived from a hypothetical family with four members and one income earner, indexed in some fashion to the regional poverty line and a 40 hour work week. As many family units are not composed in this manner, especially in Ann Arbor, it is impossible to determine if the living wage ordinance actually gives families a living wage. It could be too little or too big. In fact, using the poverty line as one reasonable measure of a living wage (one approach advocated by ACORN), the living wage for a family unit of one would be close to an annual total income of $10,400, or an hourly rate of $5.41 for a 40 hour workweek with 48 weeks out of the year worked, which is LESS than the Michigan minimum wage (soon to be $7.40/hr).
posted by jcp2 on March 5th, 2008 at 3:31 pm“If you can have a job for four weeks a year as your only job, you probably don’t need the city’s living wage law.”
If you take a four-week job, doesn’t that usually imply that you’re having trouble finding work and really struggling?
“As for the comment about bartenders and people who clean up crap deserving more money because of the type of job they have.”
I don’t think that people with undesirable jobs should necessarily be paid more. But Judy McGovern and the poster I was responding to were arguing that these jobs are very desirable (easy, fun) and should therefore be paid less.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 6th, 2008 at 9:38 am“If you take a four-week job, doesn’t that usually imply that you’re having trouble finding work and really struggling?”
Sure, but it could also mean that you’re just rich and bored.
posted by Me on March 6th, 2008 at 11:03 amPeople who might just take a four-week job are most likely just busy doing other things too. Like being students or teachers who need to work their breaks to make ends meet. Or maybe they are camp counselors for local kids also on breaks. There are many people who cobble together a number of employment opportunities rather than have one 40 hour a week, 52 week a year job; sometimes because of the season and sometimes because the work has a fixed time frame. Think construction workers, landscapers, actors, musicians, artists. There are also jobs where you work intensively for a couple of weeks or months, and then get a couple of weeks or a month off; so some might take odd jobs to keep active like firemen or EMS personnel. And then there is the very possible, retirees screwed out of their retirement benefits that haven’t quite developed a taste for cat food.
There seems to be many more likely answers than maybe they are “just rich and bored”.
posted by abc on March 6th, 2008 at 11:54 amMy point was that there are numerous explanations other that AAIO very narrow answer of
“..that you’re having trouble finding work and really struggling”
and you have named a great many of them.
posted by Me on March 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pmI would argue that the demographic of independently wealthy people who take near-minimum-wage trash-cleaning jobs for fun should probably not be a big factor when writing labor laws.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 6th, 2008 at 12:04 pm“If you take a four-week job, doesn’t that usually imply that you’re having trouble finding work and really struggling?”
Well, again, having worked this job, no, not really. It usually means that you’re on the third string of the football team, or are in high school and want to work somewhere that you can hang out with your friends and drink, or are retarded. Those were the three main demographics.
“As for the comment about bartenders and people who clean up crap deserving more money because of the type of job they have.”
I think you missed my point—to do most of the jobs well, like with professionalism and attention and thoroughness, etc., they would have to pay far more than they do. Instead, they hire more folks at a lower wage who do a crappier job. It’s not that they deserve more, it’s that no one who could do the job well would do it for so little money unless there were something else markedly undesirable about their employability. Like that the only person there whose commitment to food safety and cleanliness that I’d trust is a guy named Andrew, who’s obviously severely developmentally disabled and whose income is primarily from social security. He’s not getting a better job, but damn if he doesn’t take the one he’s got seriously and does it enthusiastically.
But let me again emphasize how low these seasonal rates were—you start at $4.25 an hour and get a quarter raise each year. It took four years to make the then minimum wage, and even then, you’re only working six hours a night (though you work six days a week, usually).
So, no, these aren’t people who are supporting families. And I don’t know if $10 an hour is the best solution. But I will argue that the incredibly low pay encourages corruption and illegal behavior, and discourages hard work or competency.
posted by js on March 6th, 2008 at 12:31 pmHere’s a little more info on AA’s living wage. This is based on research I did a few years ago and I haven’t looked into it since - I don’t know whether it has been amended beyond changing the wage rate, so consider this just background. I used a combination of the city’s website and resources found here at the time to piece together AA’s LW story: http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/
In 2001, the city figured the living wage using a combination of cost-of-living indices to determine a ‘fair figure’ that is rooted in local expenses/costs (there is no such thing as a standardized regional poverty line, this was our community’s attempt at figuring this). Typically “living wages” are figured assuming 3- or 4-person families – it’s unclear to me how many people Ann Arbor included in its family size assumption. Also typically, living wages start with an annual figure, then work backwards to an hourly wage by distributing it across 40 hours of work per week and 50 paid weeks per year.
The living wage is (was?) adjusted each year on April 30 based on the percent change in the federal poverty line — so if there’s an increase in the FPL of 3%, then the Ann Arbor living wage would increase 3%.
The latest numbers I can find use the 2006 FPL (so perhaps that was applied to 2007 contracts/wages?) and required the relevant employers to pay employees $9.91/hour when health care is provided, or $11.48/hour without health care.
posted by sue on March 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pmi think the original post was referring to this
posted by Anonymous on March 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pmhttp://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-26/120404049576950.xml&coll=2&thispage=2
Though, for the folks who think that $10 an hour is too much to clean up vomit—how much would it cost to get you to do it?
posted by js on March 8th, 2008 at 1:20 am