This week the Living Wage Campaign (LWC) learned that economics is not just a social construct created by bourgeois elites to suppress the masses. On the contrary, economics is based in reality and can be a helpful tool in understanding the world around us.
However, economic reality is a mere inconvenience to Northwestern’s Living Wage activists.
Attempts by the LWC to artificially increase wages are already being met with unintended consequences, detrimenting campus workers most of all. Before the campaign carelessly carries on, it is incumbent upon them to consider the realities of their agenda.
The inconvenience de jure is Sodexo’s decision to cut back on work hours for some of its campus employees. Dining hall workers were informed they could face cutbacks of two and a half hours per week.
Moreover, a union steward reported at the campaign’s emergency meeting on Monday that non-union supervisors are filling some worker responsibilities.
Sodexo’s cutbacks came just a few months after the LWC compelled Sodexo to accept a $10 minimum hourly wage for campus workers, along with subsidized health benefits. Workers already making that much received an $0.80 hourly raise.
According to the same union steward, these benefits were a direct result of the pressure placed on Northwestern and Sodexo by the campaign.
Now, in the face of cutbacks, the LWC is incredulous and demands action. But many who have followed the living wage saga saw this coming in its entirety.
In the pages of the Northwestern Chronicle, I predicted that an unnatural hike in worker’s wages would result in cutbacks in the number of workers or hours worked. The left-leaning Daily editorial board and economist Morton Schapiro both agreed publically.
The reason? Wages are determined by a complex interaction of employers’ willingness to pay for labor and employees’ willingness to offer their services.
When an exogenous force makes labor less expensive, firms can be expected to employ more of it. But when something makes labor more expensive, firms will employ less.
If labor is made more costly by an artificial mandate, the result is a general loss for society. Employers hire less labor than they would like, workers work less than they are willing to, and consumers enjoy less of the final product than before.
Paradoxically, the Living Wage activists don’t disagree with my account.
The Campaign’s leader Kellyn Lewis, who I like personally, postulates that the wage hike finalized in the fall caused the cuts. But if they don’t even deny the economic consequences of their wage policy, why continue advocating it?
The only explanation is not rooted in economics at all – the LWC can’t be bothered by such practical realities. Their intransigence is rooted in an ideology of compulsory self-sacrifice. Not the type of “sacrifice” that encompasses volunteerism and benevolent giving, but the type that coerces (through taxation) or guilts (through public hostility).
The LWC prescribes a moral right to an hourly wage. But behind the emotional appeal, no logic follows. What makes the $13.23 “living wage” a moral imperative, but $13.22 an egregious violation of human rights?
Human rights are basic freedoms inalienable to individuals by nature of their existence. $13.23 per hour is just a subjective data point from an online calculator at a liberal website.
There is no equivalence between true rights, which limits coercion, and people “wanting stuff,” the creation of which is only the product of the aforementioned freedom.
Unfortunately this age-old materialism (rob Peter to pay Paul) leads to innumerable unintended consequences.
When wages are hiked to appease the LWC, and Sodexo inevitably cuts back on work hours, which workers does it hurt the most? Not the workers with the most seniority and skill, but rather the young workers in need of experience.
More importantly, when the campaign finally gets its living wage, which will be the forgotten men and women?
A higher wage means a different pool of applicants for future jobs, more skilled and qualified than before.
Meanwhile, the young, unskilled workers looking for their first stepping-stones to a career are left out in the cold.
Inevitably, a living wage will most harm those on the first rung of life’s ladder and most in need of a job. And although this economic reality may not be convenient for the Living Wage agenda, it is the reality nonetheless.
Ryan Fazio is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
