Don’t Look for the Union Label
The same union mentality that helped caused the demise of the American auto industry is working its way into downtown Indianapolis.
United Here, a hotel workers union, is holding a march this afternoon on Monument Circle in an effort to unionize workers at the Westin and Hyatt Regency in downtown and the Sheraton at Keystone at the Crossing. Union officials says hotel workers in Indianapolis make less than those in other Midwest cities because they aren’t unionized.
A union spokeswoman says the starting wage for a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency in Indianapolis is $7.25 an hour, but that same wage in Chicago is $14.25 an hour.
Now let’s apply some common sense to this situation.
Using their math the Indianapolis housekeeper makes about $15,000 annually. Using a standard salary calculator, the Indy housekeeper should make $19,000 to be comparable with the Chicago housekeepers salary. But that’s not what’s happening, using the Union’s own math, the Chicago housekeeper makes about $27,000 a year. So not only is the Chicago housekeeper overpaid, the Unions want the Indy housekeeper to be overpaid too.
Now before you all say I am advocating slavery (even though you get free meals and housing), I believe in paying people as much as possible. Good wages tend to translate into good performance, however the company must be able to afford the labor. If the hotels increase the housekeepers’ wages they will have to cover the costs by increasing prices, cutting profits or laying off staff. And in the economic climate none of these are good ideas.
But there’s a union behind all this so why should I be surprised at any of this.
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Could you support a family on $15,000 a year? I don’t think so. Even 19K is stretching it. It’s really pathetic in a country like ours that those who provide us with the basic needs are often unable to earn enough to provide it for themselves. We wouldn’t need unions if corporations would pay their employees a fair living wage!
$7.25 x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year = $15,080/year
$14.25 x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year = $29,640/year
Using this site:
$15,080 in Indy is $17,852.65 in Chicago.
$29,640 in Chicago is $25,036.69 in Indy.
But who’s underpaid or overpaid here is a value judgment. If I assume the Chicago rate as my baseline instead of the Indy rate as you did, the Indy housekeeper is drastically underpaid to the tune of $10k/year.
Once upon a time, manufacturing jobs were the ticket to the middle class in America for those without college degrees. But we went through an efficiency revolution in manufacturing similar to the one we went through even longer ago in agriculture. We can now produce even more output with much fewer workers, thus those days are gone. Now, unionized service sector jobs that can’t be outsourced are our best chance at creating a new path to the middle class for those without college degrees. You don’t like that solution because yes, it means you’ll have to pay more for a hotel room. But it also means a whole new group of workers will be able to afford hotel rooms that couldn’t before. Conservatives and libertarians think this will destroy growth and kill businesses. But it worked for Henry Ford. It worked during the 50s and 60s when we created the largest middle class in history and experienced our largest period of peacetime growth. I see little reason it can’t work again.