Image via Ithaca College Macabre Theatre Ensemble Facebook page.
About 60 protesters organized by the Tompkins County Workers Center gathered in downtown Ithaca Tuesday evening to rally for a “living wage,” according to a report by the Ithaca Journal.
“We want our wages, supersized. Hold the burger, hold the fries,” many of the protesters shouted, according to the Ithaca Journal.
The Ithaca protest was part of a national campaign organized by Fight for $15. On the same day, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced a $15 minimum wage for all state employees.
The Ithaca Journal reported that several members of the Ithaca College Macabre Theater Ensemble participated in the protest by by allowing others to squirt ketchup and mustard on them in return for a donation. Ithaca College student Cat Proulx told the Ithaca Journal the performance symbolized the humiliations low-wage workers endure in order to keep their jobs. A picture of this incident is available at the Ithaca Journal page linked above.
The ensemble’s Facebook page lists Matt Porter, Alistair Bennie-Underwood, Hannah Paquette, Sarah Chaneles, and Cat Proulx as the students behind their performance-protest.
The Living Wage Study by the Alternatives Federal Credit Union found that the living wage for a single worker without employer-provided health insurance in Tompkins County, where Ithaca is located, is $14.34.
According to the Ithaca Journal, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation is funding the Tompkins County Workers Center’s campaign for a living wage with a $20,000 grant.
The way to fight for any wage is to have a marketable skill. The minimum wage is an artificial assessment of one’s skills. If the nation had the chutzpah to eliminate the minimum wage altogether and set the market free we would see remarkable results! But greed wills otherwise. Sadly the small business owners suffer the most.
In other news, the stock price of KraftHeinz went up a little.
Out current economy relies on the minimum wage workers to fill those jobs, the market therefore won’t allow all of them to skill out of it, and without the ability to collectively bargain for a wage, huge conglomerates will not pay the workers what the market actually calls for, that money goes to the top. Market forces could only be relied upon for efficiency if there were enough employer firms to be negligible individually just like the employees
These firms are paying shared holders and thus making profits.. I.e. – the market is already inefficient. Law of second best states that if a market is already inefficient, any change in a variable away from that condition will have an indeterminate effect. Distorting a distorted market can be therefore be efficient and move the market toward the competitive equilibrium. McDonald’s is not an instrument of the invisible hand, it’s in fact quite visible