The Star-Ledger has editorialized strongly in favor of a $15 per hour minimum wage, here, here, and here.((These editorials are slightly dated, but they are what I found with a quick search of NJ.com, and I doubt the newspaper’s position has changed.))
It is certainly entitled to take that position, and the point of this post is not its merits. I only ask that the newspaper have the courage of its convictions and implement that minimum for its own operations.
Yesterday morning (and often before) the newspaper published an advertisement soliciting newspaper carriers to make morning deliveries for several publications, including the Star-Ledger. The ad indicated that carriers would be paid “up to” $1,200 per month for three to four hours of work a day.((Carriers also have to supply their own, insured, automobile and there was no mention of a mileage payment.))
How do the employment terms offered compare to a $15 per hour minimum wage? Lets look at the best case scenario. Three hours a day for seven days a week is 21 hours of work a week. If you divide the $1,200 monthly remuneration by the four full weeks in a month, you get $300. That weekly pay of $300 divided by 21 hours results in an hourly wage of $14.29.((All figures are rounded to the nearest whole cent.)) But this figure is not really accurate because most months have a few more days than four full weeks, so let’s annualize it. The monthly pay of $1,200 multiplied by 12 months results in annual pay of $14,400. Three hours a day multiplied by 365 days per year yields 1,095 hours. The hourly wage using those figures is $13.15.
Even that calculation is a best case scenario, because the $1,200 monthly income is an “up to” figure and I used the smaller possible number of hours required. The resulting figures for four hours per day are $10.71 ($300 for 28 hours of work per week) and $9.86 ($14,400 for 1,460 hours of work per year. (As the higher pay is probably related to the larger routes, I would think it would require the greater number of hours.)
I understand that the Star-Ledger is somewhat shielded because as I read the advertisement, the carriers will not be working directly for the newspaper but for a third-party contractor. However, I also suspect that the people who have to start their day at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to deliver newspapers are probably exactly those whom the editorials mention at the beginning of this post are trying to help with a minimum wage of $15 per hour. The Star-Ledger could insist as a term of its contract that all workers delivering its newspaper be paid at that rate. It would probably cost the paper more to get the service then, but that is exactly the position that many employers would be in with an increase of that magnitude.
Jay Bohn
June 7, 2021