In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650 (established by the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines). The limitations of how the federal government calculates poverty understate how far the minimum wage is from economic security for workers and their families.
That’s part of the argument. If it is condescending to you then no minimum wage is needed because minimum wage workers could form a union.
May Day is the perfect day to educate one’s self about the history of union suppression. If you think you see a pattern, you’re right, but the reasons for the pattern have nothing to do with the workers’ abilities and everything to do with powerful people using everything in their arsenal to prevent collective action.
MLK was killed because he was trying to overcome the suppression. It is the workers’ abilities because leaders could have picked up where he was stopped. There are no leaders, which to me means, there are no abilities.
Yeah, “mental capacity” is the main hurdle for minimum wage workers to unionize… Fuck off.
What else?
Unless you’re offering me a tutoring position, I’m gonna leave it to you to figure this one out… You’ve got the internet at your fingertips. I believe in you.
You could name the main hurdle without becoming a tutor.
Of course there are reasons like no time from working two jobs or union busting behavior as seen from Starbucks or Amazon.
But that leaves enough workers who could run the union.
The main problem is convincing all minimum wage workers to join the union. Somebody has to come up with the necessary communication strategy. Whoever can do that most likely doesn’t work a minimum wage job.