I am surprised to see Hedges promoting such a tepid "solution." Even $11.00 hr - which is well above any figure I'm seeing in the discussions, for sure - will not relieve the "debt peonage" he describes. 40 hrs per week for 52 weeks a year at that wage = $22,880. That's with no vacation/sick time. And as we all know, high numbers of minimum wage workers do not get 40 hrs a week. That is not going to lift even a single mother with one child out of the rob peter to pay paul syndrome. Not with the cost of rent/utilities/transportation/food being what they are.
Nor does such a campaign challenge power in any meaningful way.
Not, of course, that I "oppose" raising the minimum wage. And one could hope, I suppose, that if low-wage workers actually organized to demand such, the experience might "give them ideas" - and who knows where that could go?
I must say, with sorrow, that he is spot on in his remarks on the AFL-CIO:
Nader is right when he warns that we are not going to be assisted in this effort by established unions. Union leaders are bought off. They are comfortable. They are pulling down at least five times what rank-and-file workers make. Nader says we have to mount protests not only outside the doors of Walmarts and General Electric plants, not only outside congressional offices, but outside the doors of the AFL-CIO. There is no established institution inside or outside government that will help us. They are all broken or complicit.
(emphasis added)
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