For those working in retail today, thanks to our Democratic Legislators and Republican governor, if you made $11 an hour plus time and half on Sundays and Holidays last year, this New Years Day, instead of $16.50 an hour, you’ll make $16.80! (Because your base wage goes to $12 per hour but your Sunday and Holiday Pay goes from 1.5 to 1.4 increase)
So where does your employer get that extra thirty cents an hour?
Here’s how! If you made $15 an hour, you made $22.50 an hour last year and only $21.00 an hour this year! (because your Holiday increase went from 1.5 to 1.4)
In other words, if an employer had five employees at minimum wage and one clerk at $15 an hour, he’s funding you raise by cutting the wage of another employee.
And they called this the “Grand Bargain!”
By the way, all state legislators and our governor voted to give themselves a nice big fat raise this year.
Unless the minimum wage increase bumps up the rest as we are always told it will, but I still say this new law overall satisfies the greatest good for the greatest number test.
Ah, trickle down.,…..haven’t we heard that before? Do you have data to prove that this will be a “greater good”?
Not so much a data point as my view that it’s OK if some go down slightly while still making enough to allow those who weren’t making enough to make a little more.
Or, in this case, to make a lot more — an 8% decrease for a small cohort of hourly workers, compared to a 24% increase for minimum wage workers.
Christopher made no reference to “trickle down”. The phrase “trickle-down” refers to the premise that when wealth is given to the already-wealthy, the added wealth will “trickle down” to the less wealthy in the form of increased wages, hiring, and consumption by the wealthy.
Are you claiming that this law does more harm than good? If not, then you agree that it passes the “greatest good for the greatest number” test. If so, then the burden of proof is on you, not Christopher.
The question is how many higher-paid workers work Sundays and holidays and do not work overtime (the population that’s hurt by this), in comparison to the number of minimum-wage workers that benefit.
The thread-starter deserves some clarification.
The regular overtime laws for Massachusetts have not changed. So if you worked 40 hours at $11 an hour, so that your Sunday and holiday pay is overtime, you’ll get a raise (to $12/hr) and you’ll still get time and half. The reduction in Sunday and holiday pay therefore affects only those workers who work less than 40 hours a week and work those days. The law also says that workers cannot be forced to work Sundays and holidays.
Nearly all the discussion here at BMG has been focused on men and women who work full time at minimum wage jobs. Those working class men and women are getting a raise.
This is a great example where a functioning media could actually provide some real data. How many people will actually be affected by the reduction in holiday pay, versus those will see a net gain from the increase in minimum wage.
I put together a spreadsheet and did some numbers. For convenience, I examined the results only after the full increases have been applied.
The scenario I ran is a full-time worker who puts in 32 hours a week during the week and 8 hours a week on Sunday. In 2018, I used $11/hr, with time-and-a-half applied to the Sunday hours. The result is $484 per week — $352 of straight time and $132 of Sunday time.
I then ran the numbers for that same worker at $15/hr with no Sunday multiplier. The result is $600 per week, 40 hours straight time.
So the effect of this bill is to provide a 24% increase in pay.
I also ran the numbers for 2019. The effect of this legislation is to increase the weekly pay of the worker from $484 in 2018 to $518.40 in 2019. The latter number is $384 at $12/hr and $134.40 at 1.4 times $12/hour. That’s a 7.1% raise.
For a full-time minimum wage worker, the result of this bill is a significant pay raise.
Finally, just for the record — the “nice big fat raise” that the legislature gets this year is 5.93%. The 7.1% increase in 2019 for a full-time minimum wage worker is 20% larger than the “nice big fat raise” coming to the legislature.
I would think that those of us who applaud higher wages for working-class men and women would join me in welcoming this long-overdue increase in the minimum wage.
I am in favor of higher pay for legislators and I should have thought that someone with your views would be, too. We need to pay legislators a good wage, otherwise only the wealthy will be legislators.
I fully supported higher pay for legislators and still do, for reasons you mentioned.
That said, these same people voted for an effective 8% pay cut for people making $36-55K a year.
The 8% pay cut is for full-time workers at higher wages who work Sundays, so that minimum wage workers can get a 24% increase, over the full phase-in period. It’s a 1.8% cut for those higher-paid workers in 2019.
The phrase “nice big fat raise this year” is your own. It doesn’t leave me with the impression that you support it.
Here’s the breakdown:
Those making $11 an hour in 2018 will see an increase of 26% in five years.
Those making $12 an hour in 2018 will see an increase of 15% in five years.
Those making $13 an hour in 2018 will see an increase of 7% in five years
Those making $14 an hour in 2018 will see a LOSS of 1% in five years
Those making $15 and higher in 2018 will see a LOSS of 8% in five years.
Consider this. If in 2018, you were at $15 an hour, your gross wage for the year would be $40,560. Now it may be possible to live in Massachusetts at a gross earnings of $40,560, but in five years that $40,560 goes down to $37,440.
Simple question: What spending cuts does this individual make to absorb a loss of $3,120? Or, does the fact that someone else is making more money give that individual such a warm and cozy feeling that she can skip eating dinner and turn the heat down to 60 degrees?
There isn’t any such individual in the entirety of the Commonwealth. The impetus for the law was to force employers to pay $15 per hour where before THEY SIMPLY DID NOT do so. Duh.
Very few employees made $15/hr per hour. Very very few of those who do make $15/hr are given Sunday and/or Holiday shifts (never mind the every Sunday you presume.). Consider: you are an employer; do you pay an extra $6/hr to have a $15/hr employee on, versus an employee making $11/hr?
You are become rather ridiculous in your effort to twist the facts to suit your prejudice…
Source please.
Source please
Please drop the personal comments. I’ve already put one person on “timeout”.
The fact remains, no matter how one looks at it, that this “Grand Bargain” is a net loss of wages for anyone working in retail at the $14+ range.
I suspect that the business owners who crafted this “bargain” knew it to be revenue neutral to their bottom line. Again, they are giving Peter the part time cashier a raise by taking wages from Paul the full time produce clerk.
@ I already put one person on timeout:
This is not your playground, and your are not an owner, editor, or moderator of this site.
This is demonstrably false. A retail worker who is paid $14+/hr who works 40 hours any days except Sundays and holidays is not harmed by this. A retail worker who makes $14/hour and uses the allowed twelve weeks of newly-created paid family leave collects $6,720 that they would not have without this law. Even if that worker worked all 52 Sundays and all 11 holidays, they would lose $3,528 from the reduction in special time. So that worker gains almost twice as much as they lose.
More accurately, dozens of Peters will end up making significantly more, while a few Pauls may end up getting a little bit less until they shift their hours away from Sundays and holidays.
The very law under discussion, the one that legally requires employers to raise their minimum wage. Derp.
Mathematics: many employees at various rates per hour and a limited number of time and a half shifts. Your willingness to believe some employers willingness to part with an extra 3,200/yr if they don’t have to, notwithstanding.
If you prefer not to be called ridiculous and prejudiced, don’t be ridiculous and don’t be prejudiced. It’s very simple
So you have no proof that “very few” ,make $15. I see, Team leaders at Target make $17 an hour. Personally, I make $16 an hour, working in retail as do most all of those who work at similar positions throughout the sector that I work in.
Tell me why you and other well-to-do Democrats think that it’s okay to cut my wage in order to give a lower paid worker an increase?
I don’t see any “proof” from you that those Team Leaders at Target who make $17/hour work on Sundays and holidays. The new law says that nobody can be forced to work Sundays and holidays. The burden of proof is on you to show the harm you claim. So far, you’ve provided only bluster.
It is interesting that you write provocative statements like this in the first person, then whine about “personal attacks” when your audience responds to them. If you don’t want your audience to “attack” you, a good start might be to avoid attacking your audience.
You’ve shared that you make $16/hour. I’m guessing, since you’ve also written that this bill cuts your wage, that you work Sundays and holidays.
Your commentary leaves the distinct impression that once again (as in your earlier objections to the equal pay for women legislation) your desire to advance the interests of working class men and women hits a brick wall when it comes to even a tiny sacrifice on your own part.
In response to your final paragraph, most Democrats — of all economic categories — agree that a very small sacrifice on the part of a few higher-wage workers is worth exchanging for a huge increase in the wages of a very large number of minimum-wage workers.
You are on a time out with me, but I making an exception for this reply.
The ignorance and/or arrogance of that statement is beyond the pale.
Democrats and our Republican governor are patting themselves on the back for raising the wages of people in the $30-35K range but ignoring or in your case, minimizing the reality that they are funding this increase by cutting the wages of those making $36-55K.
I would love to watch you, or any of the Republicans or Democrats who signed this bill to look into the eyes of a someone making $46,000 in 2018 and tell them that making $42,500 by 2023, a loss of $3,500, is a “small sacrifice”.
More bluster.
The cut in the Sunday and holiday overtime rate was the pound of flesh needed to get the law passed. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t go down that way. We live in an imperfect world.
That reduction in no way funds the TWENTY FOUR PERCENT increase in the minimum wage.
It looks to me as though you are again focused exclusively on yourself. Once again you distort to the point of outright deceit the facts of the situation, in an attempt to bully your audience into supporting your wildly incorrect description of the issue..
There are thousands of minimum wage workers who will receive a 24% increase over the next few years. There are also a relative handful of people like you who will have to change their schedules in order to avoid a small decrease.
I invite you, with your $16/hour wage, to stand in a room full of minimum wage workers and tell them how terrible this new law is. See how much sympathy somebody who is working full time and making $22,000 a year has for your “suffering” as you’re forced to either change your schedule or make “only” $42,500.
Most Massachusetts Democrats are willing to make a small personal sacrifice in exchange for a larger good. Most Massachusetts Democrats value the greater good for the many above the small price paid by the few.
Some of us are grateful for the prosperity we have enjoyed, and are happy to do our part in helping spread that prosperity to those less fortunate than us.
Some of us are not.
How much of a wage cut did you have to take, Tom? What “part” did you or members of your profession give up in exchange for this?
@ “How much of a wage cut did you have to take, Tom”:
Still beating your own drum — “me me me”.
I’ve gladly voted in favor of tax hikes for me, honored to pay my fair share. I’ve supported each of the many Proposition 2 1/2 overrides and debt exclusions that I’ve been affected by. I enthusiastically support increased income tax rates in the higher brackets, even though I’ll be impacted by them. I support Somerville’s new transfer tax.
I routinely tip food service and hospitality workers 30% or more, because I don’t know any underpaid servers or cleaners.
I think the bill is a badly needed band-aid that makes life a tiny bit easier for thousands or tens of thousands of men and women who suffer FAR more than you. I am FAR more moved by their stories and sacrifice than yours.
Thanks for posting
I’m glad people are honored to pay their fair share. I wonder how many on here utilize the opportunity Mass gives you to pay a “little” extra on your taxes. You can use the voluntary higher tax on your state taxes. Some like Elizabeth Warren and John Kerry (who could afford to) don’t, but maybe those on here can start a new trend.
Few taxpayers across Massachusetts do pay at that higher rate. According to the state Department of Revenue, on average since 2002, 1,200 people each year check the box on the tax form to voluntarily pay more. That’s contributed to just over a quarter million dollars to the state’s coffers each year – a drop in the bucket since Massachusetts has a budget of about $40 billion.
No, volunteering to pay more than you have to is paying more than your fair share. This is one of the scummiest ideas from the right—”if you like taxes so much, just volunteer to pay more!” Everyone should pay what they owe in taxes, no more but also no less. No one likes taxes, but people who hold Scott’s view have no sense of social solidarity: they derive not the slightest satisfaction from living up to a civic obligation.
Agreed. I am not a fan of charitable acts from the rich, at least those that are strictly monetary donations.
To quote Niebuhr: Philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
Maybe, Tom, you could tip everyone a little extra every Sunday. It wouldn’t cost you much because you showed us using mathematics that hardly anyone is affected by this pay cut..
Maybe, Bob, tipping will be easier for you if you learn the difference between 1.5x (150%) and 15%.
The math about this legislation is the same whether you like the outcome or not — that’s how math works.
I gave you proof. You just don’t like it: if sufficient numbers of people made $15/hr or greater there would be neither impetus nor need for the very law in question. .
I see. So the the legislature passed and the governor signed and entirely superfluous law just to discomfit you and persons in similar position?
Using that logic you should be able to sue your employer for refusing to give you Sunday and Holiday shifts…or indeed overtime shifts in general. Why don’t you try that and see how well you do? Then you can see how those of your fellow employees, whom you will supplant on those shifts, will regard you…
Nobody cut your wage. Limiting access to the already limited overage to which you are neither guaranteed nor entitled is not a wage cut.
The numbers you have been using represent the upper bound: the maximum possible money to be made under the old regime. Very very few of those making $15/hr (or greater) reached that upper bound: the number of shifts is to small and the amount of alternate labor at a cheaper price was to great.
Working class citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who were making $36-55K a year will, in five years time, experience a wage reduction of 8% to aid in funding a wage increase for workers making $30-35K, all due to legislation signed into law by our Republican governor and Democratic legislature. Dismiss it as you will, minimize it or rationalize is anyway you feel comfortable. I find it to be deplorable and not in support of the working class.
You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.
A small number of workers making more than $15/hour will have to either change their work schedules or accept a small reduction. That modest price allows an enormous number of minimum wage workers to receive a huge pay increase (24%).
“I find it to be deplorable and not in support of the working class”
I find your opposition to this legislation representative of the true depth of your support for the working class, just as your earlier opposition to the equal pay legislation revealed the true depth of your support for gender equality..
The breakdown you’ve provided is for full-time hourly workers who currently work Sundays and holidays. That is by no means all workers making $15/hr and higher.
You’ve chosen to focus on the cohort of workers who pay the highest price (however large or small that is).
I think there are some much more interesting questions, such as:
1. Considering the workers making $11/hr today, what were they making in 2014?
2. Considering the workers making $11/hr today, what is the likelihood they would be making $15/hour in five years in the absence of this law?
I also note that we have not mentioned the TWELVE WEEKS of paid family leave provided by the new law.
The state has also increased the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) from 23% to 30% in 2019. This helps about 400,000 taxpayers each year.
For all those on this thread who claim that the negative effects of this bill are insignificant : what’s your theory of why this language got into law?
Is it an accident? We’re business owners tricked? Or what?
I assume that business owners saw a successful ballot initiative as inevitable, and chose to work with legislators to come up with something they could live with.
I think the exchanges about this issue, both here and in the larger media, would be greatly enhanced with some actual data about how many minimum wage workers will benefit and how many workers will be harmed by the reduction in Sunday/holiday overtime rate.
Finally, it is perhaps worth noting that RI and MA were the only two states who still had the Sunday/holiday overtime provision. Correctly or incorrectly, that provision is viewed as part of “blue laws” that most states left behind years ago.
It bought support. I for one am not necessarily denying that some will see a net loss, but when you legislate you need to see the bigger picture.
Again, it’s cruel to tell someone making $46,000 a year that they will have to find a way to live on $42,500 and take comfort in the “bigger picture”. This is simple kitchen table economics.
As I understand it, our legislators and the business owners whose asses they kiss each day saw that the $15 minimum was going to be a ballot question that would pass. Business owners threatened that if it passed, they would launch a ballot question to lower the state sales tax and both parties were sure that would pass as well. Lower sales taxes would mean lower revenue unless the legislators grew a spine and voted to raise taxes on the rich, not to mention that sales taxes are deeply regressive anyway.
So instead, our legislators took the easy way out and accepted the proposal offered by the business owners: “We’ll pay some of our labor force more, but make up for it by paying some of them less”.
And they called it a grand bargain.
The bigger picture is that far too many of Democrats office holders in Massachusetts are DINOS when it comes to labor issues.
But again you have to keep in mind we are legislating for everybody, and as someone who would love to be making $42,500 I can’t bring myself to get that worked up.
I invite anyone who wishes to try the following exercise.
1. Determine the number of hourly workers will lose pay from the change to Sunday/holiday. Estimate their hours (8 per day is a reasonable starting point). Multiply these numbers by the expected amount they’ll have give up. For example, 1,000 affected employees at $15.00/hr, times 50 Sundays, times 8 hours, times 0.5 is $3 M.
2. Determine the number of minimum wage workers who are currently receiving $11/hr. Multiply that number by 2000 (50 weeks at 40 hours per week) and multiply that by 4. For example, 10,000 affected employees is $80 M.
As others have pointed out on this thread, the reason a minimum wage law is even needed is that there are more minimum wage workers than higher-paid workers. I used a factor of 10, but feel free to run the numbers with a smaller or larger multiple.
Just based on sheer arithmetic alone, the overwhelming win for minimum wage workers is obvious. A $15/hr Sunday worker will have to give up $7.50/hr for 8 hours per week. A single $11/hr minimum wage worker will gain $4/hr for 40 hours per week. That’s a $160 weekly gain for each minimum wage worker, contrasted with a $60 weekly loss for each affected Sunday/holiday worker. On an annual basis (assuming 50 weeks per year to simplify the arithmetic), that’s an $8,000/year gain for each minimum wage worker compared with a $3,000/year loss for a Sunday/holiday worker.
There are simply NO credible scenarios where this is anything except a HUGE win for minimum wage workers. Elsewhere on this thread, team leaders at Target were offered as an example of an affected Sunday/holiday worker. Various sources like this and this suggest that the supervisor/employee ratio be in the range of 5-12, with technical organizations (such as technical support call centers) tending towards 5 and retail organizations ending towards 12.
One January 2018 analysis estimates that 943,000 minimum-wage workers will benefit from this legislation (emphasis mine):
Using the above simplified model, 943,000 minimum wage workers results in a net gain for those workers of $7.544 B. That’s seven point five BILLION dollars in new wages for our lowest-paid employees.
Suppose there are only 5 minimum wage employees for each of the higher-paid workers that we’ve been talking about. That assumption results in 188,600 negatively-affected Sunday/holiday workers. Using the above simplified model, the result is $0.56 B.
So the $0.56 B sacrifice of those affected Sunday/holiday workers results in a $7.54 B gain. That’s a factor of THIRTEEN!
I don’t know what kitchen table some of us sit around. I do know that if the people sitting there are able and willing to do simple arithmetic, they’ll conclude that this legislation is a GIGANTIC win for working class families in Massachusetts.
You’ll have to be specific about the language to which you refer.
The language cutting the Sunday differential from 15 percent to 14 percent. There seem to be two arguments on this thread. One is the repulsive idea that a worker making more than the minimum wage should not complain about it because they already have it pretty good.
However, it’s the other argument I am curious about. Why would employers care about this, if it’s so insignificant? Are they that powerless, or that stupid?
“Why would employers care about this, if it’s so insignificant? Are they that powerless, or that stupid?”
Asked and answered upthread, with essentially the same response from both johntmay and me — the removal of Sunday/holiday overtime was the largely symbolic concession that the business lobby demanded in exchange for their support.
They knew, as well as the rest of us, that the several ballot initiatives were going to pass. The elimination of Sunday/holiday overtime was a small price to pay in exchange for the swift passage of the rest of the legislation. However significant the cut is for Sunday/holiday workers, it is more than outweighed by the raise guaranteed for the million or so minimum wage workers who benefit from this legislation.
I think you mean from 1.5% to 1.4%. (one-point-five and one-point-four, not fifteen and fourteen)
You have this backwards: My entire point, at the least, is that there are are no employees who have it as good as johntmay thinks they do: He is assuming that any given employee who is payed 15$/hr for time subsequently works all available Sundays and Holiday shifts maxing out the time-and-a-half benefits.
On the legs of this assumption johntmay calls the changes to the laws a wage cut, but since there are a limited amount of overage shifts and a large number of employees the overage time is, as noted, neither an entitlement nor guaranteed.
Again, you have it backwards. Not all employees can work the Sunday and Holiday hours. But all employers (who are open Sundays and Holidays) have to pay the time and half. This is a fixed cost for the employers and a good businessman (or woman) will care deeply about it. They can distribute the cost amongst their employees, with preference likely going to lower wages where able. So the cost is both monetary in what they pay out per week, and the time to schedule appropriately.