Low bank wages costing the public millions, report says

[Redfairen]

Source: Washington Post

Almost a third of the country’s half-million bank tellers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, according to a report due out Wednesday.

Researchers say taxpayers are doling out nearly $900 million a year to supplement the wages of bank tellers, which amounts to a public subsidy for multibillion-dollar banks. The workers collect $105 million in food stamps, $250 million through the earned income tax credit and $534 million by way of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center.

The center provided the data to the Committee for Better Banks, a coalition of labor advocacy groups that published the broader study, to be released Wednesday, on the conditions of bank workers in the heart of the financial industry, New York. In the that state alone, 39 percent of tellers and their family members are enrolled in some form of public assistance program, the data show.

“This is the wealthiest and most powerful industry in the world, and it’s substantially subsidized by our tax dollars, money that we could be spending on child care or pre-K,” said Deborah Axt, co-executive director at Make the Road New York, one of four coalition members.



Read more: http://m.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/low-bank-wages-costing-the-public-millions-report-says/2013/12/03/21a932ee-5bb0-11e3-bf7e-f567ee61ae21_story.html

[brewens]

1. You'd think my local credit union would pay pretty well but there is a never ending

parade of new faces so that must not be the case. It didn't used to be that way. For years you could count on seeing the same people working there.

One thing is that now I don't go there much and they have branches all over the place. It could be I'm not seeing where the longer employed people are ending up. Maybe it's not as bad as it appears just going into the main branch once a month or less.

[mountain grammy]

2. Are we finally ready to raise the minimum wage and put an end to this nonsense?

No less than $15/hr. There would be some inflation, but the economy would boom. I have friends driving cars that should be crushed, but don't have that extra money for a car payment.

Redistribute the wealth to the rich and they hoard it; everyone else suffers. Redistribute to the poor and they spend it; everyone benefits. Must have been quite the actor to make people believe otherwise.

[cstanleytech]

3. Raising the mininuim wage isnt the problem its

that companies have an incentive not to pay better because they know the government will pick up the slack and they even encourage their employees to seek assistance rather than pay them a livable wage.
No, what needs to be changed is to start deducting the cost of the public assistance from the companies themselves rather than from the taxpayers.

[mountain grammy]

4. the "incentive not to pay better" IS the minimum wage!

[MindPilot]

5. minimum wage is just your boss's way of saying,

"if I could pay you less, I would."

[mountain grammy]

12. Yes, exactly!

[cstanleytech]

6. No, the incentive to pay better is to start taking the cost

of providing things like food stamps out of the corporate profits.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. No, raising the minimum wage is the solution.

Trying to assess corporate profits for the cost of social safety net programs is more complex and provides yet another incentive for companies to use accounting tricks to minimize "profits."

[cstanleytech]

8. Uh huh and that will address the problem of

companies paying their employees so little that they have to apply for food stamps how?

[Gormy Cuss]

9. Fifteen dollars/hour will catapult most full time employees out of eligibility,

That's how.

eta: even for part time workers raising the minimum wage to that level would greatly reduce eligibility.

[cstanleytech]

19. As a short term fix sure but what about long term?

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Continue raising the minimum wage every few years

rather than letting it stagnate well below the average rate of increase in all wages.

One principle goal of business is to minimize cost and maximize profits. Without a bit of strong-arming from the government the majority of employers will pay as little as possible for the employees outside of the ownership/corporate management level.

[cstanleytech]

22. Yes but right now if they just raise it without

anything built in so that it adjusts automatically every few years we will just end up right back where we are now.

[Ace Acme]

11. Minimizing Profits

It's long been known about "Hollywood Accounting" in the movie business, which contrives to create so many cost items payable to insiders that there are no profits to tax.

Apple Computer operates in a similar mode. They created a subsidiary in Ireland that owns all the patents, and then they pay their subsidiary license fees on all the products they sell--so all there are no profits after the license fees are paid to the Irish subsidiary. BY use of this ploy they have piled up between $100 billion and $140 billion in cash upon which they have not paid US taxes.

[KamaAina]

21. Sports teams do it too

all the revenue from the TV deal and the seat licenses and the replica jerseys and whatnot goes to Wildcat Holdings LLC, not the Wildcats themselves, allowing the owner to go to the city and say, "The Wildcats are losing money. We need a new stadium, or else we're moving to L.A.".

[rainy]

13. Here's the real solution:

Tax the companies 75% on any profit over a certain percent. This is how it was done in the past. Then the employer is forced to put the money back into the business and the workers to avoid the high taxes. It all changed once the tax rates were dropped so low.

[Fla Dem]

15. That sounds good, but there's no guarantee excess profits will go to the employees rather than

to big bonuses and salaries for executive management. At least a $15 minimum wage goes directly to the ee's. Any company that doesn't pay a fair/living wage should not be allowed any tax breaks.

[geek tragedy]

18. They could easily work around that--just pay more money to executives. nt

[glowing]

16. Well, why not both. Have a minimum wage and any

Company that ends up with people on public assistance and who actively wants full time wages, should have to pony up the money for their lacking support. Like, if they don't offer health care, and their employees are now on Medicaid, they ought to pay more into the pot for the burden falling on the public.

God forbid we choose to do both items to keep the crooks at bay? It doesn't have to be a fight. One is a method of insuring a live able wage. And let's face it, as soon as the business people feel the employees have more money, they will eventually increase costs of items somewhere else. In order to keep them from inflating prices too much, make them responsible for those at the minimum who would be right back at their poverty like in no time. So the other is a payment plan to keep costs unfairly off of the whole, while the likes of Walmart heirs, earn billions before breakfast.

[geek tragedy]

17. Why is that preferable to having the company just pay the people more money

so they don't have to go on public assistance?

[Psephos]

27. how right you are n/t

[olddad56]

25. Raising the minimum wage is a band-aid at best. Lowering the maximum greed of the employers....

might make more sense. If you raise the minimum wage, the employers will pass that raise in wages off to the consumers and taxpayers. Plus greed being what it is, they will through in a little price hike for themselves. We re dammed if we do and dammed if we don't. Stick a fork in all of us.

[Kingofalldems]

10. America needs a raise.

[citizen blues]

14. I worked in the consumer finance arm of CitiGroup

I was a manager. One of my employees was a young, hard-working family man with three children. You would think with dad in a professional job as a loan officer that the family would be set, but I couldn't get the company to raise his meager pay. Instead, his family qualified for WIC and his children were on medicaid. The government bailed out the company, but didn't require the big banks to be responsible to their workers.

[Pterodactyl]

23. We should totally end that $900 million subsidy. Stick it to the bankers!

[Lars39]

24. I remember talking with a bank teller once about 5 years go

And she was so excited about receiving a $1000 Christmas bonus, meaning she grossed $13,000 that year. I couldn't help but point out that the bank instead of her earned interest all year on that bonus. Workin' for chicken feed, even back then.

[Warpy]

26. The only thing that will work is a substantial rise in the minimum wage

and by substantial I don't mean Obama's measly $9.00/hour, it should be all the way to $12-15/hour.

That's the only way to raise wages across the board and get the economy out of this hole it's in. Marginal businesses that should have gone under years ago will die. The rest will thrive as the money moves through the economy.

It will also help to cap executive salaries to a multiple of the lowest paid worker's pay, and by that, I mean what they're paid by agencies if those bastards try to fire everybody and hire temps.

The new minimum wage law has got to be indexed to inflation.

That's what was wrong with the old one, no indexing.

That also killed the progressive tax structure that made us so prosperous, no indexing.

This time we have a chance to do it the smart way.