This is exactly what the early 20th century minimum-wage proponents were hoping these laws would do: keep black workers from competing for jobs. We hear a lot today from Democrats who want to ditch the Senate filibuster, which enables the minority party to block legislation that doesn’t have a 60-vote majority, ostensibly on the grounds that it has been wielded in the past to thwart black progress. Last summer, President Obama referred to the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” that was used to block civil-rights bills. We’ll know that Democrats are arguing in good faith when they hold minimum-wage laws and the labor unions that back them to the same standard" (WSJ, Feb. 2021).
"The last year in which black unemployment was lower than white unemployment – 1930 – was also the last year in which there was no federal minimum wage law. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 was openly advocated by some members of Congress on grounds that it would stop black construction workers from taking jobs from white construction workers by working for less than the union wages of white workers." (Sowell, 2009, pp. 94-95, footnote deleted)
Addendum
"In the late 19th century, amid an influx of foreign immigrant labor, New York and other states began adopting prevailing-wage laws. Twenty-two states still have them on the books. The federal version—known as Davis-Bacon—was enacted in 1931 after a builder using a mixed-race work crew from Alabama won a bid to construct a veterans hospital on New York’s Long Island" (WSJ, April 2022).
No comments:
Post a Comment