CA: Deal Reached to Raise Minimum Wage to $15/hour

[dead0man]

Good for them.  The rest of us can see how it goes.  Seems too high to me, but it's not my problem.

[dead0man]

Well, so much for trying to get legal workers in California agriculture.  Agriculture is largely hard labor and you're not going to find legal workers willing to do it for minimum wage.  Either otherwise legal workers are going to be getting paid off the books so as to avoid the taxman or illegal workers will be getting paid off the books so as to avoid the ICEman. Strawberries picked at $20/hour or more are not going to be competitive with berries picked elsewhere.  On the other hand, killing off the California agriculture industry would do a lot to solve California's water problems.

They don't care about things like that, this is a victory, man, don't...ahem....rain on their parade.

and I didn't consider how this was going to affect me earlier.  So now I'm going to pay 10% more for strawberries in Feb and they are going to come from Argentina?

[dead0man]

I have no problem paying a lot for strawberries in Feb, I'm often shocked how cheap fresh fruit is in the middle of the country in the middle of winter.  I wonder, "how the hell is anybody making any money off of 49 cents/lb bananas?".  Seems like they should cost a lot more.  I understand this is because the people picking my fruit are getting paid jacksquat.  I think they should be paid better wages and my fruits should cost more, which would happen if we actually cared about illegal immigration.

[dead0man]

Big Labor's deal to make sure unions were not affected by the minimum wage are starting to piss some union members off for some reason.  They don't like getting paid less than non-union people.

link - LA Times

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Good job lefties, couching a trick to get more shop unionized inside a "free money for poor people" law.  You sneaky bastards.

[dead0man]

If a side effect is a hundred more union shops in the state, who cares if a fraction of union people (and everybody not in or around the big cities) get screwed a little.


...but like I said in my first post, good for them, the rest of us can see how it goes.  States experimenting is a good thing.