A Times editorial makes the case for increasing the federal minimum wage because it would be good for business. The Times writes:
These clear benefits might help explain why Gap, the apparel chain, said last week that it would raise the minimum pay of its hourly employees to $9 an hour in 2014 and to $10 next year, which will benefit 65,000 of its 90,000 workers. The company's chairman and chief executive, Glenn Murphy, said the move would "directly support our business, and is one that we expect to deliver a return many times over."Some retailers pay their workers even more. Costco, one of the most successful retailers in the country, has a starting wage of $11.50 per hour for most entry-level jobs, and its average wage for hourly workers is $21 an hour. Patrick Callans, a senior vice president for the company, said that Costco's higher pay and benefits "allows us to attract and retain great employees."
But if businesses are raising wages on their own, why is a federal minimum wage increase necessary to force them to do what they are doing already? As Richard Epstein put it the other day, "these considerations cut exactly the opposite way. If increased wages alone increased productivity, there would be no need for federal intervention: Employers would have all the incentive they need to raise wages voluntarily. That is how markets work."
Meanwhile, if the Times is so confident that higher pay is the secret to business success, it might try the practice out on its own business before imposing it, by force of law, on the rest of the country. Just this week, a Times article about writer Michael Gross's apartment reported that Mr. Gross quit The New York Times in the late 1980s "for a better-paying job at New York magazine." Seth Mnookin's 2004 book Hard News spoke of "relatively modest pay" as part of "the implicit contract the Times has always had with its reporters and editors." And that's the skilled — supposedly, at least — labor.
The unskilled part, like actually delivering the paper, the Times contracts out to Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, which in turn contracts the job out itself to individual contractors, whose reviews at Glassdoor.com refer to "below average pay" and "per diem earnings" of $10.60 and report that the delivery company charges the contractors for the plastic bags and for the use of a work area in which to bag the newspapers. The reviews at Indeed.com include one that says "the pay was a joke." Granted, these are anonymous reviews, but if the Times really believes what it says in its editorial about how businesses can deal with a minimum wage increase by "by modestly increasing prices and by giving smaller increases to higher-paid employees," then it ought to practice what it preaches by turning all those newspaper delivery drivers into paid New York Times employees with full benefits and union wages. It could pay for it by "modestly increasing" advertising and home-delivery prices, and by "giving smaller increases" to top Times executives. Think of all the business benefits to the Times, right?
What a bunch of phonies.