On CPAN's Washington Journal this morning the US Chamber of Commerce executive vice president, David Chavern, appeared on a viewer call-in segment. Like all others from anti-union and anti-worker organizations, Chavern voiced his opposition to the minimum wage when asked about it by a caller. A minimum wage is is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly wage that employers may legally pay to employees or workers.
The minimum wage concept was first introduced as way to control the proliferation of sweat shops in manufacturing industries. A sweat shop was a working environment considered to be dangerous or difficult especially by developed countries with high standards of living like the United States. The sweat shops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered to be substandard wages. The sweat shop owners were thought to have unfair bargaining power over their workers, and a minimum wage was proposed as a means to make them pay "fairly." The minimum wage was first introduced nationally in the United States in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The current minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Do you know anywhere an individual can live today in the United States today off of $7.25 per hour? And yet you have the vice president of the largest organization in the United States representing businesses saying that minimum wages are "counter productive".
Watch the US Chamber of Commerce Vice President talk about the minimum wage.
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