OPINION:
Here we go again. On Thursday, another round of fast food protests coordinated by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is scheduled to take place in major cities nationwide. This marks at least the 10th such protest over the past three-and-a-half years.
For some in the media, that means Thursday is almost as good as a day off; reporters can simply rehash their pieces from previous protests. Like the tactics, the demands are the same: a $15 starter wage and a union.
But for those looking for a new angle, a report from the Center for Union Facts provides some background. It uncovers how the SEIU is able to take a handful of disaffected fast food employees and turn them into a national movement.
The short answer: money. Gobs of it. The report details that the SEIU spent about $20 million in 2015 alone on the Fight for $15. Since 2012, the union has spent as much as $89 million of its member’s often-forced dues payments, not taking into account its other political activities.
Labor department filings show how this money is spent. The bulk of it goes to what’s known as worker organizing committees, quasi-labor organizations that don’t face the same organizing rules as traditional unions. These committees then pay workers centers and activist groups to plan, staff and carry out the protests.
Millions of dollars in recent years have also gone to advocacy organizations such as the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, which provide the flawed “research” that contradicts the overwhelming economic evidence that minimum wage increases reduce job opportunities.
Millions more go to the high-priced, New York public relations firm Berlin Rosen, which is tasked with generating as much media for the protests as possible. (Berlin Rosen came under fire last year because of its cozy relationship with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.)
Some union members may be understandably upset that tens of millions of dollars of their dues are being spent on non-member activism. One SEIU organizer admitted that union members would grow “restless” if “$15 and a union” failed to significantly increase their membership.
This is a risk that the SEIU, which lost close to 6,000 members last year, can’t afford to take. “The union can’t just keep transferring revenue it makes from bargaining contracts to pay for its social justice work because collective bargaining is shrinking,” says former SEIU President Andy Stern.
While it’s true that the Fight for $15 has chalked up some recent victories in California, New York and Washington D.C., it has failed to recruit fast-food employees.
And as we continue to see, dramatic minimum wage increases are not the way to increase the size of a workforce. Cities throughout California that have already dramatically raised their minimum wages are also suffering the consequences. Oakland saw 10 grocery stores and restaurants close in its Chinatown district partially because of the city’s $12.25 minimum wage. Across the Bay in San Francisco, several restaurants, including Abbott’s Cellar, Luna Park and Source shut their doors, blaming the city’s recently passed $15 minimum wage.
In Washington D.C., Wal-Mart pulled out of two planned locations in the city’s poor neighborhoods, partially because of a threatened full-time starter wage of $30,000. This cost the city, whose youth unemployment rate is 30 percent, hundreds of good job opportunities.
Numerous New York businesses have also reduced job opportunities owing to the state’s existing, mandated wage increases. (Specific stories can be found on Facesof15.com.)
Perhaps because of stories such as these, Washington D.C., California and New York leaders all expressed reservations about dramatically increasing their starter wage rates. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who supports $15, has openly worried that the rate would put the District at a “competitive disadvantage” with Virginia and Maryland. California Gov. Jerry Brown admitted, “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense.” And as recently as last year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called a $13 starter wage “a nonstarter.”
Clearly, their better instincts were no match for the SEIU’s money and influence, which bought a revised outlook and political support. Hopefully, reporters who cover these “strikes” will reveal what they are: a union-inspired economic free-lunch fantasy detached from employment-market realities.
• Richard Berman is the president of Berman and Company, a public affairs firm in Washington, D.C.
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