Why Are Walmart's 'Black Friday' Union Critics Stopping At $25000 Per Employee?

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By Richard Berman

In the build-up to Black Friday, union leaders demanded that retailers like Walmart pony up the cash to pay their employees at least $25,000 a year. The list of benefits such a change would bring, union officials claim, is limitless-higher wages, reduced poverty, economic growth, and more.

Here's a question, though: If all of this is true, why stop at such an arbitrary wage as $25,000? Why not $40,000, or even $50,000?

Set aside anything you remember from your high school economics class and take their logic for a spin. The benefits would be infinite-just pick up a calculator and work it out yourself. We could all but eliminate poverty from coast to coast; the country's economic fortunes would be instantly reversed.

Don't think this is right? Here's the logical train that proves the point. The first order of business is disproving that pesky business lie that minimum wage hikes kill jobs. Don't worry: There are two or three studies from labor-funded think tanks and academics that show there is little or no negative effect on employment from the policy, even in a recession. Never mind that 85 percent of the most credible academic research says the opposite-economists always disagree.

If no one loses their jobs or sees their hours cut, businesses will still need to make ends meet. Simple, says the union wage hike advocate: Raise prices. It's the obvious solution. There's no possible way this will drive away customers.

Well, that was easy. All we need to do now is sit back and watch the economic benefits accrue. Fear not: Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has now joined with labor unions to found a think tank that argues that minimum wage hikes both create thousands of new jobs and spur economic spending.

It's a cut and dry scenario: The more people make, the more they spend; the more they spend, the more jobs will be created; the more jobs that are created, the more people will be employed; and as the new people make money, the more they spend. This upwards spiral never ends.

So what are we waiting for? We've finally unlocked the potential of an economic perpetual motion machine! If all of this is true, then a minimum wage guaranteeing $25,000 a year is definitely the right move to make.

Hopefully, at this point, you're either laughing at my sarcasm or slapping your forehead asking why you didn't think of this first. Most people intuitively know a huge wage hike would be a cure far worse than the disease. The laws of economics guarantee that there would be negative consequences.

But the laws of economics are the same, whether you're talking about a minimum wage of $9, $10.10, $15, $30, or anything in between. The fact is that substantial increases to the minimum wage pose a danger to the country's economic health and the jobs that employ low-skilled workers.

So this holiday season, when you hear unions and their supporters clamoring for $15 per hour ($30,000 annually), ask them why stop there, why not take it to $25 an hour? If unions really cared about working families, they would quit whining and encourage them to follow the path of most successful individuals - work hard and move up the pay ladder over time. That seems more logical to me.

Richard Berman is the executive director of the Center for Union Facts, which also operates WorkerCenters.com.

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