If we have minimum hourly wage then what about a minimum monthly wage?

So what are you proposing? I don’t quite understand what you are trying to say here?
If an employer hires you they have to promise a certain amount of hours per month type thing?

@SQUEEKY2 I’m not sure either. Just wondering. I thought I had an original idea. I had goosebumps. I would guess that all employee have a contract if they want. For stability.

There is one and it is called a salary.

I am guessing you are more of thinking along the lines of a basic income.

One of the major problems in contemporary workplaces is casualisation. So even if there is a minimum hourly rate, if someone is not employed in a fixed term, or permanent position, there’s no guarantee of full-time employment. While we have minimum periods people can be asked to work for, there is no maximum. Governments can’t legislate to force employers to give people a guaranteed week or month’s work. It wouldn’t be sustainable financially. While we don’t want too much casualisation, we need casual work to be available.

Here, there are rules in place that ensure you must be given fair hours to work – I think it’s two-hours minimum. And then you must have a guaranteed break of so many hours. This avoids people being asked to work for an hour, being sent home and then being called back in an hour later. However, to say to companies that they must employ people for a whole week or month would reduce the number of available jobs and I’d say it would handicap business efficiency.

@Earthbound_Misfit, it seems to me that there is no advantage to having more jobs that require government support (food stamps, etc.) of workers because the number of hours and wage rate does not provide sufficient income.

Since when is a job a guarantee that it will support a particular lifestyle. Never. That is part of the incentive to do better, work harder, and move into better jobs. Some jobs would require people to have a roommate. That’s nothing new.

@MollyMcGuire, the guarantee that minorities face is they will find few opportunities for employment that provides the means to support themselves, much less their family. No matter how hard they may work, most will not be able to “move into better jobs.”

VERY TRUE!!^^ @Bill1939 I just wonder why most conservatives fail to see that connection.
Or maybe most have made their wealth on the backs of what is almost slave labour? BUT then again most would argue that it isn’t slave labour these extremely under paid people are free to leave at any time , yeah right tell that to the single mother trying to feed her kids.
What really gets me is that these dire hard right wingers SCREAM for smaller government, well for fucks sake stop making the low end worker depend on government so much and you might just get your wish.

@Bill1939, I’m not suggesting people who work full-time, whether at one job or multiple jobs should require food stamps to survive. However, I don’t think the government should be able to compel businesses to employ people for a set time beyond a couple of hours. That is going to result in less opportunities for people to work. If a company has sufficient work for a half-day, and they’re required to employ someone for a week, they’re just going to manage without employing anyone. That doesn’t help people who are disadvantaged. A day’s pay at a reasonable hourly rate is better than no pay at all. Here, the minimum hourly rate is much, much higher than in the US.

@Earthbound_Misfit, I would be interested in where wages are higher than in the U.S. and what the hourly rate is. I agree that a government would find it difficult to pass a minimum annual wage law that could be enforced. However as I said before, “there is no advantage to having more jobs that require government support… because the number of hours and wage rate does not provide sufficient income.”

A few scores of years ago, the need for part-time employment was filled by adolescents who lived at home and were not dependent upon the income such jobs provided. Today, youth employment is all but nonexistent. When these jobs are limited to adults with a family where both parents must work, often at multiple jobs, little time is left to provide proper supervision of their children and few opportunities exist for children to learn the work ethic.

Modern day slavery is economic slavery. Companies and corporations in the U.S. are moving to States where wages are less. The loss of income taxes is motivating States to try to reduce salaries, decrease unemployment and retirement benefits and shift a larger portion of the health care burden onto the worker to lure businesses back. The result is a growing disparity between the poor and the wealthy that is increasing social unrest.

I do not know how this worldwide downward spiral can be reduced, much less reversed. Population growth and automation will continue to decrease employment opportunities and the value of labor until economies collapse and social anarchy replaces governments. If anyone has a suggestion of how we can prevent a return to barbarism, I would like to hear it.

OMG @Bill1939 I truly wish I could give you a thousand great answer votes for ^^ that answer and yet I still wonder why our right wing friends can’t see that?

Bill1939, the minimum wage in Australia is AU$17.70 per hour or $672.70 per 38 hour week (before tax). This.nsf/mf/6302.0 was the average weekly wage in Australia in 2015.

In the twelve months to November 2015, Full-Time Adult Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings increased by 1.7% to $1,499.30.

The Full-Time Adult Average Weekly Total Earnings in November 2015 was $1,556.30, a rise of 1.2% from the same time last year.

Casual employees covered by the national minimum wage also get at least a 25 per cent casual loading. This means if you are a casual employee, you get a further 25% to cover you for lack of holiday/sick leave. Australians get four weeks holiday per year. $17.70 is the minimum hourly pay an adult can receive.

Perhaps the US should fix its wage legislation. People in Australia don’t work for slave labour wages. We also have legislated parental leave and a minimum of five days off per year sick leave which accrues each year. I still say legislating to force employers to employ people for a week, month or year would be counter-productive.

@Earthbound_Misfit, thank you for your reply. It seems to me that capitalism has had a long history of major influence on legislation both at the state and at federal levels, too much in my opinion. Our conservative party has fought against all forms of employment by governments, stating that it adversely effects the ability of businesses to generate profits. They would end federal agencies such as the Veterans Agency and Medicare/Medicaid, having private enterprise take over their functions.

I agree that legislation requiring how many hours and at what rate they should be paid, is the wrong way to address the problem of underemployment and wages that do not provide for the means to escape poverty. My view is that governments should compete for labor by providing more services (such as single payer health and retirement), which would require increasing taxation on those with great wealth. These actions would put pressure on private enterprises to increase wages in order to draw the workforce away from state and federal employment. However, this is unlikely given the worldwide effort to do the opposite.

@Bill1939 Statements such as yours make my black friends angry and consider them to be racist remarks. So do I.

@MollyMcGuire I do not see how what I wrote might be considered racist. I would appreciate knowing exactly what I have said that would elicit anger.

^^Yeah ME TOO!! I don’t see anything wrong with what @Bill1939 said, I find what he did wrote spot on and totally agree with it.