Midget Wages Hurt Seniors, Too – Ridley-Thomas

Ari L. NoonanNews1 Comment

Assemblyman Ridley-Thomas

Fifth in a series. 

Re: “Sebastian: How to Protect Young Workers”

Last seen last Friday, state Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas was talking about protecting the fiscal rights, and the futures, of young workers with regard to what he prefers to call a wage floor.

Today the subject is their senior colleagues who are working for midget wages.

“In addition to all the young people who would be affected by a wage floor, we have a lot of older people who also would be affected by a wage floor,” said Mr. Ridley-Thomas, a Democrat who represents Culver City and the Crenshaw District.

“I am talking about people on the precipice of retirement. Frankly, they only are working because they have no retirement. Or they have retirement that is woefully insufficient.”

When a business owner tells the second-year legislator raising the minimum wage “will irreparably harm me, I would say ‘we need it. All of us would be irreparably harmed, society, California, Los Angeles, Culver City are irreparably harmed if:

  •  “We have senior citizens in the poorhouses.
  •  “If we have young people who spend the first 10 years of their post-high school, or college, or vocational school lives on the public assistance rolls and in Medi-Cal, chronically.”

Mr. Ridley-Thomas rigorously maintains that “unacceptably” low wages hurt not only the workers but others. Low wages, he says, “are a drag on growth, a drag on expanding and letting more people in on the California dream.

“Ultimately, such wages harm our economy,” he said.

(To be continued)

One Comment on ““Midget Wages Hurt Seniors, Too – Ridley-Thomas”

  1. Janet Chabola

    If the Federal, State and cities would stop taking so much money away from small business owners, they could very easily pay more wages to their employees.
    Depending on the type of business, Workers Compensation for a clerical employee costs an employer 10% more of the employee wage. So if an employee makes $100, the employer has to pay $10 in premium for the Workers Comp coverage. Other job titles are considerably more……
    Then there could be a discussion of the Employment taxes charged by Federal a and State agencies. There are 2 types of State unemployment taxes, 1 Federal. However, the Feds tack a surcharge on every employer in California because our State owes them billions in unemployment taxes.
    Of course, there are more……

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *