In Orange County, SEIU is currently leading a ballot initiative in the city of Anaheim to force resort district employers to pay a minimum $18 an hour – the highest minimum wage in the country – to employees across the board.
This type of ballot box social engineering will soon result in a catastrophic failure in the marketplace. Forced wage restrictions like these will result in a net loss of economic productivity as employers face hard decisions on personnel. For example, businesses will scale back on hiring employees because the marginal cost per employee is greater than their marginal benefit.
Businesses will then pass the increased price of their goods and services on to the public to match their rising costs which will inevitably price out certain consumers traveling to the region. In sectors like hospitality and food service, employees can be negatively affected by these working conditions because the competition for these jobs now outweigh any opportunity to gain work.
Strongarm tactics like these are par for the course for unions.
Sacramento school teacher Julianne Benzel earlier this month found herself on administrative leave after questioning the double standard of school walkouts across the country. Thousands of students across the country, including many from her own Rocklin High School, were encouraged to ditch class for a day to demand legislators enact gun restrictions that would presumably keep schools safe.
Benzel didn’t discourage her students from taking part, but she posed the question of whether school district officials would be as understanding of mass demonstration against, say, abortion.
She was told the next day not to bother coming to school and later found out from a television reporter she has been suspended for bucking the district’s stance on the gun rights protest.
Obviously the school district is way out of line here, but an ever better question is where was the teachers’ union while all this was happening?
As a public teacher, Ms. Benzel has undoubtedly spent years paying dues to the California Teachers Association. And for what?
Representation. Or at least that’s what the union says.
But actions speak louder than words, and Julianne Benzel’s experience makes it patently obvious the union couldn’t care less about its members and that its real priority is advancing a leftist political agenda.
When she challenged her students to think critically rather than accept the liberal narrative without question, the union turned its back on her.
It’s long past time for teachers to turn our backs on them.
