Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[L]et’s all make fun of Bernie Sanders, that shameless hypocrite.
Champion of the working man? Hah! He may go around trashing the Walton family (owners of Walmart) Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon) and myriad McDonald’s franchise owners for not paying their employees at least $15 an hour.
But look at him. He’s stiffing his own workers. He bragged about running the first presidential campaign in the history of humanity to reach a collective bargaining agreement with a union (Local 400 of the United Food & Commercial Workers). But is he paying them $15 an hour?
Not according to them, he isn’t. Some described themselves as earning “poverty wages.” Another said he needed more money “to be able to feed myself.”
So the champion of the working man turns out to be a heartless plutocrat flying around in private jets while his minions toil in sweatshop-like campaign offices from Portsmouth to Des Moines, barely able to pay their bills.
Worse, say a host of critics, Sanders refuses to recognize that what has happened to him uncovers the fatal flaw in the whole idea of raising the minimum wage: if you pay workers more, you have to pay fewer workers. So unemployment goes up; prosperity goes down.
But it doesn’t. And nobody on Sanders staff earns “poverty wages.” And the union contract to which Sanders agreed really does guarantee decent pay and benefits to its workers. And – at least in this case – Bernie Sanders isn’t the one being a hypocrite. Perhaps some of his workers are. So are some of his critics.
The complaining workers, as reported by a story last week in the Washington Post, are members of the campaign field staff. In most campaigns these are the eager, earnest, and almost all very young people who spend their days (and nights) in storefront offices, medium-priced hotel rooms, or not-so-new cars recruiting volunteers, supervising phone banks, drafting press releases, canvassing door-to-door, or plotting to do all of the above.
On the Sanders campaign, pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement, these field staffers earn $36,000 a year. Unless one is the sole breadwinner for a household of seven, this is not poverty. Nor does it pose any danger that a person would be unable to feed himself.
Unless, perhaps, said person is unable to live without consuming several cups of $5-a-pop specialized coffees, a few pints of $17 craft beers, and a $12 sushi burrito every day. There are all kinds of ways to throw money around. But a 25-year-old – probably single and childless – who cannot cope on $3,000 a month has some explaining to do. Anyone at that stage of life who needs more money shouldn’t have gone to work for a campaign.
At a 40-hour week, their salary would net them more than $17 an hour. But they claimed they were working more like 60 hours a week, putting them below $15 an hour. There’s no reason to doubt that they put in at least 60 hours a week. That’s what they signed up for.
(Field staffers are not eligible for overtime because the Trump administration reversed an Obama Labor Department rule on who is entitled to overtime pay; but that’s a whole separate discussion.)
On Sunday, the Sanders campaign agreed to reduce the field staff workweek to 42 or so hours, meaning they will earn more than $15 an hour. They won’t earn any more money; they’ll just work less. That’s probably not good for the campaign, but there wasn’t much else Sanders could do. His only alternative would have been to reduce the field staff, which would have been worse for the campaign.
That helps explain the difference between a political campaign and a business, and why this little squabble has no connection to how minimum wage increases would affect a normal business or the economy in general.
Successful businesses last indefinitely. They can do long-range planning. They have several options when they have to pay higher wages or benefits. They can invest in labor-saving devices so they need fewer workers. They can find other savings and efficiencies. They can accept a slightly lower profit margin. Most of all, they can raise prices for the goods or services they sell.
A political campaign exists for no more than 18 or 20 months, hardly time for long-range planning. No chance for labor-saving devices; not much chance to find efficiencies. A campaign cannot accept a lower profit margin because it has no profit. Its goal is not profit, but winning the election. It cannot raise prices for the goods and services it sells, for it does not sell goods or services.
In theory, it can raise more money. But campaigns are always raising all the money they can.
In this case, Bernie Sanders is neither a hypocrite nor a heartless employer. He and his campaign honored the contract they signed. The complaints, it seems, came not from the union, but from a segment – small or large we do not know – of field workers who were dissatisfied with the agreement.
As to the significance of this flappette to the rest of the world, to economic policy, or to the wisdom of raising the minimum wage: there is none.
