Tags: UC-Berkeley | minimum wage | layoffs | unemployment

IBD: UC-Berkeley Touts $15 Minimum Wage, Fires Hundreds

IBD: UC-Berkeley Touts $15 Minimum Wage, Fires Hundreds
(Stock Photo Secrets)

Friday, 22 April 2016 11:54 AM EDT

University of California at Berkeley’s plan to fire 500 workers a week after the state voted to raise the minimum wage is an unlikely coincidence, says Investor’s Business Daily.

“The school was already in financial trouble — it ran a $109 million deficit last year and is projecting a deficit of $150 million this year,” the financial newspaper says in an editorial. “But number crunchers at the school had to have factored in the higher mandated wages when making their layoff decisions.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown on April 4 signed into law a 50 percent increase in the minimum pay rate to $15 an hour by 2022, saying, “Morally and socially and politically, they (minimum wages) make every sense because it binds the community together and makes sure that parents can take care of their kids in a much more satisfactory way,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

A week after the wage hike was signed into law, Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the flagship of liberal academia, sent a memo to UC Berkeley employees announcing that 500 jobs were getting cut over the next two years.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research in a March 30 report touted a hike in the minimum wage as a boon to low-income household breadwinners.

“This is a very big deal for low-wage workers in California, for their families and for their children,” Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley center, told the Los Angeles Times after the report was published.

IBD says: “It is a big deal, as well, to those soon to be out of work UC Berkeley workers. Berkeley employees whose jobs are on the chopping block might want to educate these leaders about the perils of this idea.”

Weekly unemployment claims fell to a seasonally adjusted 247,000, the lowest reading since November 1973, the Labor Department said Thursday. The total number of people receiving benefits has fallen 7.6 percent from a year ago to 2.14 million.

The decline in requests for jobless aid suggests that hiring will continue uninterrupted, Reuters reports.

“A level of applications this low generally corresponds with monthly net job gains of more than 200,000. Applications have been below 300,000 for 59 straight weeks, the longest consecutive period since 1973,” according to the news service.

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StreetTalk
University of California at Berkeley's plan to fire 500 jobs a week after the state voted to raise the minimum wage is an unlikely coincidence, says Investor's Business Daily.
UC-Berkeley, minimum wage, layoffs, unemployment
380
2016-54-22
Friday, 22 April 2016 11:54 AM
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