As a small business owner, I wish to express my absolute disgust with George Pataki for his decision Thursday to veto the recently passed Minimum Wage Bill. Pataki, as is usual for his ilk, cites concern that "small business" will suffer. What small business is it he is citing that pays people $5.15 per hour? Perhaps, he has small business owners confused with WalMart and McDonald's? Perhaps, he thinks the NFIB speaks for businesses in NYS and doesn't realize that it is just a huge fake lobby group that consistently works against any intelligent reform that might better the workers' standard of living? Perhaps, he thinks that farmers are to blame? He often claims they will be terribly hurt by any increase in the minimum wage. I can only say that maybe if he would support the increasing of wholesale milk prices to reasonable levels, they wouldn't have to struggle so!
I, and many other business owners I know, are extremely tired of being used as scapegoats by politicians who serve their big business constituents by denying some basic truths about the state's minimum wage. The lowest allowable wage is usually paid by huge businesses that benefit already from suckling at the taxpayer's teat with preferential economic development deals, tax discounts, subsidized payroll and other state-provided, tax-based benefit programs. In other words, after Walmart moves in to an area, many real small businesses close. WalMart then hires the displaced, previously well-paid employees and teaches them how to get state benefits so that these poorest workers feel that their new employer is providing for them, when in fact they have both just become part of the corporate welfare system. This is unconscionable!
I own Rock Hill Bakehouse, a small European bread bakery in Glens Falls, New York. We employ more than 40 people. Not one of them has ever been paid the minimum wage while working for me. I know many business owners and am not aware of a single one that would pay their employees the state-proscribed starvation wage. I have also met very few unemployed workers in my lifetime who would be willing to accept a job for $5.15 an hour, even if one was available. A minimum wage earner currently working a forty hour week is living almost $4,000 dollars below the federal poverty level. Why would anyone want this job? Work at this wage wouldn't even cover a family's health insurance premiums!
Perhaps, it is time to develop a reality TV show, called "Survivor: The Minimum Wage". In it, we could watch our unbelievably arrogant "public servants" live on the minimum wage for a couple of months. In this manner, perhaps they can show we silly members of the working class how painfully simple it to survive and feed your kids on $892 dollars a month. Perhaps, Elmer and our state representatives could show us by example how it's possible to rent an apartment, feed and clothe our children, provide health care and transportation to and from work on such a paltry sum.
As a business owner, I am often asked why I so aggressively support an increase in the minimum wage. Am I some kind of "do-gooder"? I guess that I could plead guilty or trying to be but the argument is not only about altruism and a sense of justice, it is also good business on two other extremely important levels. One, small business is regularly forced to compete with recipients of corporate welfare. This allows for an unleveled playing field. Huge competitors then use our own tax money to set up shop and use it again to economically enslave a workforce while providing taxpayer-provided benefits to those they enslave. Sounds kind of like a socialist state, doesn't it? As an American and as an ardent fan of regulated capitalism, I am fine with competition, but it needs to be fair. Second, Henry Ford was once asked why his workers made so much more to build Model T's than other similar factory jobs paid at the time. He responded that it was his vision that every worker on his assembly line would be able to afford to buy and drive an automobile. he understood that workers are also consumers.
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In vetoing this legislation, Pataki reveals that, far form being the upstate farmer (as he likes to represent yourself), he is in actuality a staunch member of the ruling class and part of the "I'll do anything my big corporate sponsors tell me to do" club. The interests of our country's largest corporations and our nation's poorest workers are ultimately not reconcilable, but an increase in the minimum wage could hardly put a dent in corporate profits. The average CEO in this country makes 512 times what their poorest worker makes. Our governor has revealed that he is on the side of those who represent a new kind of greed that borders on cruelty and stupidity.
Please sign the wage increase, Mr. Pataki. If you're not going to do so, I demand that you stop using me and my colleagues as an excuse for your lack of vision and compassion. Small business not only supports an increase but welcomes one and recognizes that it is long overdue.
Sincerely,
Matt Funiciello
Owner / Baker
Rock Hill Bakehouse
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