Van Bramer a sponsor of Fair Wage Act
At a New York City Council hearing held on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, opponents and proponents of the living wage bill sounded off. The hearing came on the heels of a well-attended pro-living wage rally held Monday at Riverside Church in Manhattan.
The bill, called the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, would require developers who receive public subsidies to pay employees $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 without. It has sharply divided Queens and the rest of the city, and has already been significantly amended to address various concerns.
For the rest, please click on this link:
Great. Then these developers will ask for more subsidies to offset the additional cost. One way or another this will be coming out of the tax payer wallet.
What?! Why in God’s name should the lowest man on the totem pole, the hourly worker, be asked to get the least out of these development deals? Politicians get donations, developers get millions, contractors make a mint, and then the people who actually make these buildings function by fulfilling their purpose can’t make enough to keep a roof over the heads? That’s insane. People are not a resource to exploit, they are a gift to develop.
You go, Jimmy. People need to Occupy Real Estate, too. The greedy goons.
This will drive jobs away. Look at what happened to the Kingsbridge project in the Bronx. When the Bronx Boro president demanded higher wages for potential workers. the project was cancelled. Way to go – better to have NO JOB AT ALL, RIGHT?
“developers who receive public subsidies….”
Maybe the developers shouldn’t be getting public subsidies.
I agree with Mr. Van Bramer completely and I hope everyone clicks on the link and reads his comment in the Queens Chronicle article. Thanks for the link to the full article Sunnyside Post.
Good work councilman.
Bad work, councilman: you will drive out businesses even more.
Raquel, the remarks you are making are just negative speculation. Just because a previous project failed, doesn’t mean this one will. You are welcome to your opinion, but I believe its better to stand up for what you want and what you are worth. Not just buckle and take what you can get. It sounds like you are happy with workers getting walked over just so they can make a few measly pennies. Having a terrible job that barely pays is worth less than striving for something better.
Since most of us are happy with this, you don’t need to keep commenting when people congratulate Jimmy.
For once, I agree with Roger.
Can we possibly have a van bramer free week on this site? It would be refreshing.
JV Bramer – the best thing since sliced bread! Dear Mr. Geese: what do you think is better? Working even if it is for a less than great wage, or receiving welfare and losing your pride? I have friends who have gone on welfare and they would welcome a job – any job!
You support people getting an unfair wage because at least it is better than nothing. That is a terrible attitude, and a poor person’s mentality. This isn’t about pride. Get off welfare, and fight for an amazing job and future. Invest in yourself. And stop supporting the destruction of ambition by not supporting this act.
Your friends should go out and do something, the future is bright. There are many options, take advantage of them. Legislation like this gets killed by greedy corporate suits, the same people OWS is protesting.
It seems like you are happy to bend over as long as you can make a couple dollars an hour and stay poor forever. Good luck with that!
Mr. Geese, you have no idea what it is like when people who have been gamefully employed end up on welfare. I hope you never have to find out. The future is not bright, by the way.
Cry me a river.
@ Raquel The phrase is “gainfully employed.” I have been so employed, got sick and ended up on welfare, then disability. Yet, I believe the future is bright, even if it doesn’t look it.
I would guess Oh Geese has been around the block a time or too him/herself and has learned that without laws forcing them to share the wealth capitalists will always end up taking more profit than they deserve by forcing down the wages of people who actually do the work.
If you don’t believe in that kind of regulation, then you might be best suited to becoming an owner rather than a worker.
Good luck.
Are you kidding me!?! Now they’ll have to change all the signs for our new stores to read “everything $1.50 or more” to cover these increases
I vote yes on this, btw.
Mr. Geese and Just Looking: “Share the wealth”. We can start with yours. You are into redistribution of wealth and once you run out of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY it becomes difficult. Europe is going bankrupt. No, the future is not bright.
“you will drive out businesses even more”
Ya see, whenever you assert demonstrably false statements as fact (I refer to the post where you continued to repeat the absurd claim that marijuana is a gateway drug), you lose credibility on all other issues. Nothing stopped the plethora of studies disproving this from preventing you to continue in your delusions, so I guess asking for hard evidence of your employment claim would be silly.
It’s amazing how some can repeat falsehoods these days, when fact checking has become so easy.
If the developers don’t want to pay their laborers a morally just wage, then they don’t have to take the government subsidy. It’s pretty simple, and I figured that those who consider themselves to be conservative would be against the subsidies anyway, right?
Time’s Up, you have not presented a single fact, only raw emotion. It seems you like your drugs too much!
Ad Hominem for both of you. He did present some facts that you chose to ignore. The facts about your absurd claims. You have no backing to make them. And even if someone did drugs, it does not devalue their argument. Take a logic class please. It seems you are very opinionated and uneducated. A dangerous combination.
I am not into redistribution of wealth. I am for fair wages. I am pro human and pro capitalist. I do share my wealth, its called taxes. And I assure you, I pay more than you do.
If you want any of my other opinions please ask. But stop making generalizations. It endlessly amuses me when poor people are so concerned with wealthy people’s money. Stop defending those with wealth who are immoral. Nobody wants to take their money, they just want as fair a system as can be. Not everyone will be millionaires, but stop taking the money from the poor to pad the rich. What don’t you understand about that?
And for the record I am in a very high wealth bracket and yes I support a fair system. Where the rich and poor abide by our laws.
What say you Raquel?
I say, stay off the ganja, Mr. Geese.
Wit isn’t your strong suit. I actually feel sorry for you.
@ Oh Geese Raquel is famous among readers of the Sunnysidepost. She is beyond help. Don’t even bother responding to her. She regularly fires her starter’s pistol for a “race to the bottom.” We speculate she may actually be here to generate visits to the site and increase ad revenue. It seems impossible for anyone to be as flabbergastingly dense as she.
Geese and Looking: in other words, how DARE anybody disagree with you two marxists? Have a nice day while some of us actually WORK for a living.
hahahah yeah except you work in one of those disgusting taco trucks under 46st, how do you get the internet on there?
oh i forgot, you use your welfare to pay for everything, just like your friends do.
you hate tsa agents? i wish you were on the planes when they crashed into the towers. that way we wouldnt have to pay for your mexican anchor babies.
Dear neighbors,
I appreciate that we can get emotional on political issues; but, I think we’ve all jumped the shark (myself included, recently) with personal attacks, and wishing our opponents dead. Can we all re-pledge to more civil discussion? I will do my best to improve my own standards; I urge others to, too.
I’m sure that those citizens who approve of the hike in NYC’s minimum wage have the noblest of intentions. But, there are consequences, too, such as killing current and future entry-level jobs (which has a negative effect as you travel up through the job market), making it more difficult for businesses—particularly small businesses, which pre-dominate in Sunnyside—to survive, spurring inflation, causing prices to rise, and increasing the size and power of government which concentrates more power into fewer hands, to name a few.
Here is a piece by D. Kyle Ward from the American Thinker. Mr. Ward says it better than I could, if I had the time. (The entire article is here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/winners_losers_and_the_minimum_wage.html . It is well worth your time ).
“At a low hourly wage, a business owner can afford to hire a person with minimal skills to do a simple job, which means it’s easier for those at the bottom to get a foot in the door. Once in, they can learn more aspects of the business and, if they have the capability and desire, move up the ladder. Their knowledge of the business from the ground up will give them a competitive advantage at every rung.
With a high minimum wage, the same business owner can’t afford that hire. The employer needs to ensure that the employee will be worth the high wage, and now diplomas, past work history, or an impressive interview are required. With these barriers to entry, those at the bottom can’t get a job, and without one, they can’t afford an education to learn the skills needed. They become trapped, with no legitimate means to improve their position.
A low minimum wage, or none at all, would allow an apprenticeship system to redevelop in this country. Low-skilled workers could be trained on the job and work their way through the ranks. Instead, as we follow our emotions blindly in support of minimum wages, we increasingly shut the door on one of the best ways to get motivated people out of poverty.
There is nothing self-serving in the motives of the average proponent, but the loudest supporters, who make the minimum wage an issue in each campaign, do have something to gain.
As stated earlier, ideally, the job market is a place where workers compete for the best jobs and businesses compete for the best workers. If two applicants both meet a job’s minimum requirements, the person willing to work for less will usually win the job, and in a fair market, that’s the end of it. In reality, there are a number of things that the losers can do to prevent competition. The most well-known method is to conspire to set the wages that all employees must be paid. This is the form of collusion employed by labor unions. As with government-mandated minimum wages, union minimum wages prevent low-skilled labor from offering to work for less. If you have to pay an unskilled and skilled worker the same, the skilled worker gets the job.
With this understanding, is it any wonder that unions are usually the loudest proponents for high minimum wages? They understand that preventing the unskilled from competing protects their high wages, and the higher the minimum, the easier it is to demand an increase in their own pay rate. Since unions make up the largest special interests, and donate almost exclusively to Democrats, it’s obvious why Democratic politicians support the minimum wage. These groups are not out to help the poor; they are out to help themselves.
If a politician wanted to pass a minimum wage of $50 an hour, he’d be laughed at, because we realize that politicians cannot simply pass a law to make us rich. We should also remember that they cannot do the same to end poverty. We need to return to reality and begin opening the doors to opportunity that we’ve closed in our ignorance. The next time a Democrat promotes the minimum wage, ask if he is helping the poor or his biggest campaign donor.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/winners_losers_and_the_minimum_wage.html#ixzz1fsGltzj2
The same politicians who support raising the Minimum Wage are forcing the many (us) to pay for the superior lifestyle of the few (the higher salaries and higher, safer, ironclad pensions of the public sector unions ) who fund the campaigns of the politicians.
Hmmmmmm; The “many” working to give a more lucrative life to the “few”. I thought that this was what the Left were against.
Apparently not.
The Left demonize Capitalists who seek to make profit—forgetting that the desire for profit fuels innovation and the creation of wealth most efficiently. Wealth must be created before it can be re-distributed. Yes, there are abuses, as there will be in any system involving people. But, there are laws against such abuses. Let’s enforce those laws…not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Anti-Capitalists decry “corporate greed”; is there an exception made for “public sector union/political greed”?
( Here is a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a government agency. Scroll down to “earnings” http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm )
@JKWilson Thank you. I read the excerpts from “American Thinker,” and will have to study more on the subject. I see it is more complex than I knew, yet, my gut reaction is that you can not expect people in New York to live on so little. Stop bringing retail into New York without bringing manufacturing, too.
My objection is not to low starting salaries, it is to the dearth of living wages in general. There are very few ladders to climb anymore.
I’ve been in the workforce since I was 14 years old, serving tables at a chicken restaurant in Florida. Yet I make less now than I did 15 years ago. Steady jobs dried up, I freelanced, then changed from communications to the medical field for steadier, better paying employment. Then the economy crashed and hospitals across NY closed, flooding the field with more experienced workers willing to work for anything they were paying. I’m still freelancing, just in homecare rather than writing. Still insecure, still no health insurance. It’s depressing.
To All, I apologize for letting my irritation with one frequent poster bring out some of my worst responses. I’m ashamed of stooping so low.
Just Looking, facts are stubborn things. Most of us are sympathetic to people who struggle to survive. However, nearly 50% of the public pays no income tax. Think about that: those of us who pay taxes are supporting many people and many projects. We should all have some skin in the game. As for “Joe the Plumber”, he is despicable. Christian should ban him. He has wished death on me more than once and no, I am not Mexican. I think he is a radical pretending to be a racist. Wishing I had been on the airplanes that went into the World Trade Center? My marine son and police officer son would like to get hold of him for that one . . . God bless America.
lol freedom of speech, this is america, sue me! you have no idea of what american values are, you are lucky I work to pay for your corny children to help “protect” this country.
waste of money.
you and your kids do nothing important, the rich have to support you!
“Corny children”? I think you need to use spell check, Joe!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=corny
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