Bernie Sanders Staffers’ Ask for $15 Minimum Wage, So Now He’s Cutting Their Hours

Sometimes politics gives you a good laugh.  That’s what happened when I saw that Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders had some unhappy staffers.  They wanted the $15 minimum wage that the candidate was telling America was “just.”  If it is so “just,” then why was Bernie paying them less?

Very good question. 

Sanders reluctantly agreed to raise their salaries and become the first Presidential campaign to unionize…. But there are a lot of hitches. According to The Daily Wire:

His campaign’s union contract resulted in a flat annual salary of $36,000 for field staffers. In a normal 40-hour work week, that would pay about $17 per hour. But some staffers say they work up to 60 hours a week, meaning their pay ends up being about $13 per hour.

To combat this, Sanders’ campaign will now limit staffers’ hours to ensure they are paid at least $15 an hour.

“We look forward to continuing those discussions and obviously are disappointed that some individuals decided to damage the integrity of these efforts before they were concluded,” said Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir in a statement to Newsweek. “As these discussions continue, we are limiting hours so no employee is receiving less than $15 for any hours worked.”

Shakir also told Newsweek that the campaign had offered to give field organizers a raise — to $42,000 annually, but the offer was rejected because staffers would have had to work six days a week. That salary also would have forced them “to pay more of their own health care costs,” Newsweek reported.

This whole scene reminds me of the ridiculous labor union called the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the Democrats’ biggest Super PACs.  The Wall Street Journalpointed out their hypocrisy as well:

The SEIU has hired workers across the country to protest outside businesses and restaurants, especially McDonald’s. Suffice to say they have no union and some don’t make $15 an hour, the union’s nationwide minimum-wage target. At a “Fight for 15” conference in Richmond, Virginia this month, the protest organizers showed up to demand to unionize themselves. According to the website In These Times, a woman from Las Vegas who works as a union organizer tried to deliver a letter asking the SEIU to confirm it employs them and will allow them to unionize. She was blocked by security.

The SEIU responded that it “supports the ability of all workers” to unionize, “including organizers in the Fight for $15.” But the union also claims it doesn’t employ the workers because the organizers are directly employed by individual organizing committees in each city that has a Fight for $15 campaign.

That’s pretty rich considering that most of the money paying the organizers comes directly from the SEIU. It’s also hilarious since the SEIU claims that it should be able to organize all McDonald’s workers everywhere across the country as a single bargaining unit. But McDonald’s operates on a franchise model with individual store owners. Now the SEIU claims its organizers are essentially franchisees.

Ha!  Well, we can see that this higher mandatory minimum wage is not sustainable by the fact that its advocates can’t afford to pay it.  At least not easily.

Maybe we should all be thankful for the Bernie Sanders campaign for showing us how money doesn’t just appear out of thin air…. Even if an idealistic millionaire feels so bad about his wealth that he pretends otherwise.

Now, maybe we can move on to candidates who won’t actually bankrupt our nation?

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Hat Tip:  The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Wire