Not Just the Minimum Wage

After the leak from the too-perfectly-named "Freedom Industries" plant in West Virginia, businesses were shut down for days, maybe weeks. Among these were the restaurants and fast food joints. What this meant is that workers in those places lost their wages for the duration of the shutdown. When we talk about raising the minimum wage, we should remember that that's just part of the puzzle. Most low wage workers receive no sick days or vacation days or anything of the kind. A week without work can mean the difference in being able to pay the rent. Considering that low pay, low benefits service sector jobs constitute an ever increasing share of the workforce, this is a serious matter. It's hard to accept that there's nothing that can be done about this, save from an intervention from the Invisible Hand.