The job description listed duties like web development and maintenance, graphic design, copywriting, training and general office work like answering phone calls and cleaning. While the job requirements could probably be done by anyone who has run a blog, for it to be called a web-content manager position lumps into a larger tech category, where people are making much higher pay for fewer duties. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, people with similar job titles made $30 per hour in 2012.
To be fair, Socialist Alternative was the main group backing the $15 Now campaign, but the nonprofit Freedom Socialists supported the cause and continue to advocate for a $20 minimum wage.
After KIRO-FM radio-show host Dori Monson aired his initial commentary on the hypocrisy, Freedom Socialist international secretary Anne Guerry Hodderson went on the show to defend the party. She only made things much worse, as she said that the group couldn’t afford to pay more but was adamant that other businesses should pay more. “Workers create the profits; they create the wealth,” she said on the show. “We deserve all of it.”
Hodderson is right about one thing: Workers deserve to be paid a living wage. But if small, mom-and-pop shops should pay $15 per hour, then the Freedom Socialists should, too. This just proves that it is going to be difficult for businesses to implement a higher minimum wage, especially when those socially and morally behind the initiative can’t even fork over the extra $2 per hour.
In another recent bout of hypocrisy, medical marijuana shops were warned their time is running out. Under the new, legal marijuana laws, pot businesses need to be licensed, but medical shops cannot get licenses. The Seattle City Council has already postponed enforcing the law, waiting for the Legislature to make a move. But 330 businesses just received notice that they have until July 2015 to get a license or close shop, according to a Seattle P-I article. Lawmakers didn’t know how to handle medical shops, so they ignored them.
The Legislature needs to create laws to allow those businesses to stay open. If recreational shops can get licensed, medical shops should be afforded the same opportunity.
And the Freedom Socialists should stick to their morals and cough up the money — after all, as they themselves have said, the people deserve it.