Social justice warriors engaged in the #Fight for 15 minimum wage can’t be happy with how their activism turned out at UC-Berkeley.
Last year UC President Janet Napolitano announced UC would raise the minimum wage to $15 at the beginning of the next school year, reports Investor’s Business Daily.
Unfortunately UC-Berkeley was already running a budgetary deficit — $109 million last year; and estimated $150 million this year. Despite the deficits, UC-B raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour.
A week after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s $15 minimum wage boost into law, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees announcing that 500 jobs were getting cut.
500 Jobs
Think of what this means:
- 500 real people who had at least a small paycheck will now have no paycheck.
- 500 real people who had a chance of future advancement in their careers now have no chance — they will be forced to start all over again.
How is this social justice? Did the SJWs not think through how their demands would affect the lives of real people? Writes IBD editors:
…why is anyone surprised about jobs cuts following a wage hike? It’s one of the most basic laws of economics. Any high school kid taking Econ 101 can explain it: If you raise the price of something, demand goes down.
And when demand goes down, people lose jobs.
Business income doesn’t miraculously increase to cover salary cost increases. Businesses — even the business of universities — must live within the budgets they have.
Do SJWs realize what they’ve done? Do they understand that they hurt 500 of the very people they claimed to be helping?