I'm a "don't take more than you need" kinda gal. Anyways...
Girl, I say this with love...but this is America. We don't do that and the people who do usually finish last unless you were born to wealth. It's a nice idea and we, as a people, do it on a local level in many ways, but the US is too big for anyone to expect someone in NY to take a paycut b/c someone in Nebraska needs more. Again, we do this as a public when it's a "known" -- at work I've donated vacation time to someone who was ill and had run out, for example. But I'm not about to give up a week of vacation (aka mental health time) to be the bigger person. It's gotta be someone I know who touches my heart (selfish, yes, but truthful).
But is this going to be true? Same question as I posed to Kitchop: where is the money for the raises coming from? The profit margins? Is the CEO taking a voluntary pay cut? Those options would be ideal but what I fear (maybe wrongly) is instead cost of getting materials from the docks to businesses is going to go up and then either we'll be charged more for the merchandise we're purchasing flat out or manufacturers will be paying more to get needed parts and either pass that cost on to consumers or delay giving raises to THEIR possibly underpaid workers. So giving dockworkers a pay raise may benefit a small group of people but hurt more people, people making considerably less than $39/hour, people like me. So yes, this *could* wind up taking money out of MY pocket when the CEOs decline to give up part of their salary and/or profit margin to pay the dock workers more.
No, CEOs aren't going to take a voluntary pay cut. We (the public) need to force them to take a paycut or shame them re: salary. And somehow, we're actually slightly doing it right now. People are not taking jobs they feel aren't going to feed their families, kids who used to be forced to taking multiple minimum wages positions to feed families aren't having them. If some place gives their workers a raise and then passes the amount to the consumer, I wont shop or eat there. It's really about paying attention to what's going on in the community and if you can (b/c we can't all be choosy re: where we shop, where we get groceries from, etc), let them know w/ the dollars you spend.
