You are beginning a new job, you work five 12 hour shifts a week, you have bruises and cuts all over, you receive minimum wage which is $6.50 an hour. One of your coworkers sits in a chair and watches everyone for six hours five days a week. Your coworker gets paid $12.00 an hour for basically doing nothing. How do you feel? What will you do about it? There are multiple states in the United States that do not have a minimum wage, so they do not have to pay their employees. Some workplaces do not pay their employees equally, for example, people work really hard and get paid very little. On the other hand, there are people that do not work very hard and receive a higher paycheck. Low Minimum wage should be solved by …show more content…
developing a minimum wage for all states and having a fair minimum wage for different work levels. Minimum wage is the lowest wage payable to employees in general or to designated employees as fixed by law or by union agreement. “The federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act; the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Many states also have minimum wage laws. Some state laws provide greater employee protections; employers must comply with both” (“Minimum Wage Wage”). Minimum wage does not exist in all states. This is a very serious problem. If minimum wage does not exist in some places, people can get paid a lot, little or none, depending on what their employees above them want to pay them. Also, minimum wage does exist in most of the states, but in some of the states it is not equal. Some workers will get higher wages and not work very hard, while others work extremely hard and get payed very little. For example, “Five states have not adopted a state minimum wage: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee” (“State Minimum Wages”). Ten percent of states do not have a developed minimum wage. This means they get paid very little. Minimum wage is not equal in some states and countries. For example, “On one hand are the countries with high minimum wages like France and the Netherlands, on the other hand, are the countries with lower minimum wages and low charge employees like Britain and the US where the policy focus has been on boosting individual disposable incomes via tax credits and so on” (Martin 1). Many states have high wages in which the people may work the same or less than other states with lower minimum wages. Minimum wage does not exist in all states and is unequal in other states and countries. A solution needs to be found for this evident problem and increasing minimum wage, developing a minimum wage for some countries, and making equal payments per work skills or amounts of work are all things that can be done in order to solve this problem might be that answer.
There are many different ways to solve the problems involving minimum wage. For example, “The Rhode Island legislature enacted an increase, taking the state minimum wage to $9.60 effective Jan. 1, 2016”(“State Minimum Wages”). Some states are increasing their minimum wages for example, Rhode Island is increasing their minimum wage by approximately seven percent in 2016. “The increases D.C. and Maryland passed during the 2014 session take effect July 1, 2015. D.C.'s new wage of $10.50 an hour makes it the first jurisdiction to cross the $10 threshold among the states. Maryland's minimum wage rose to $8.25 on July 1” (“Minimum Wage”). This is another example of states that are increasing their minimum wages in order to keep employees happy. Making equal payments per work skills or amounts of work, developing a minimum wage for some countries, and increasing minimum wage are all things that can be done in order to solve this minimum wage
problem. It is evident that increasing minimum wage as well as many other options could potentially be the solution to the problems of minimum wage in the United States today. Some states have not developed minimum wages, while others do not have very strong or equal wages. Minimum wage is something that one can solve and should do today.