Sanders campaign announces it will cut hours to pay staffers $15 minimum wage
Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will cut staffers' hours so they can effectively be paid the $15-an-hour minimum wage he champions on the campaign trail.
Bernie Sanders being forced to cut campaign staffers' hours so that they can effectively be paid a $15-an-hour minimum wage will teach the 2020 Democrat a 'valuable lesson,' according to Fox News' Charles Payne.
Speaking on "America's Newsroom," Payne said Sanders "blew a hole in his own $15 an hour minimum wage argument," adding that he is paying his staff "what the market would bear."
“There is a maximum amount of time you can work, some people may lose their jobs, I think Bernie may actually blew a hole in his own $15 an hour minimum wage argument,” Payne said.
“Needless to say, I think Bernie learned a valuable lesson, and by the way, his campaign doesn’t generate revenue."
The Washington Post first reported last Thursday that Sanders' field staffers were upset that Sanders championed a $15 minimum wage on the campaign trail, and made headlines for railing against major corporations who pay "starvation wages" -- even as his own employees made "poverty wages."
In response, Sanders told The Des Moines Register he was "very proud" to lead the first major presidential campaign with unionized workers, but also "bothered" that news of the internal strife had spilled into the media.
The self-described socialist candidate said junior field organizers earn roughly $36,000 per year in salary, with employer-paid health care and sick leave. But he acknowledged that their salary can effectively dip below $15 per hour if staffers work much more than 40 hours per week, which is common in presidential campaigns.
The solution is to "limit the number of hours staffers work to 42 or 43 each week to ensure they’re making the equivalent of $15 an hour," he told the Register's Brianne Pfannenstiel.
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He went on to say that the union contract "not only provides pay of at least $15 an hour, it also provides, I think, the best health care benefits that any employer can provide for our field organizers."
“Realistically, let’s be honest here, when you hear Bernie Sanders talk about this and others, the economic argument is always in hindsight, it’s always some sort of an after-fact,” Payne said on "America's Newsroom."
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"I think he believes more that it’s some sort of moral argument, not an economic argument and they try to create and cobble that together afterward.
“I don’t think that he even thinks about this in terms of dollars and cents or profits or loss, it’s just in his mind, it’s a fair thing to do,” Payne said.
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