Idaho to Working People: Drop Dead
While collecting signatures for FairWageID.org to #RaisetheWageID to $12/hr over 3 ½ years, I have received many responses that all include some allusion to the virtues of the gloriously omnipotent Free Market. Their illogic goes “Workers must receive poverty wages, because if they’re paid enough to survive, it’ll undermine the free market and all h*ll will break loose!”
What many free marketeers do not realize is that our government actively undermines the free market Left and Right. From the Wall St. bailouts to the subsidies for billionaire investors and businesses on the federal, state, and local levels, our government is deeply invested in undermining and manipulating the ‘free market’ for the rich, many of whom wreck our economy every few years. But, intervening for workers is unthinkable. This perverse, classist logic will be fully displayed this recession. (Odd how “free markets work” with decadely recessions.)
Many people who argue to keep workers in poverty do not realize that the state of Idaho has a disastrous anti-business “noncompete” law. That’s right. “Free market” Idaho has a noncompete law. This means that workers with such a clause in their employment contract are liable for legal action if they leave their job for a better wage. A banker, a hairdresser, or any other worker may be sued for leaving their employer for a better job with a competitor, as Ben Shapiro blames you for not doing. “Free market” for the rich means wage slavery for the poor.
Not only do all profits come from the laborer, who produces, sells, and/or serves and is paid mere crumbs of the loaf they produce for their bosses, those who can rent their labor. But many working Idahoans are chained to their jobs, prevented from entering a free labor market. A worker can be sued for becoming their own boss or for working at a different firm if they are in competition with their prior employer. This anti-free market law was unrelated to trade secrets.
This state is not only a “Right to Work (for Less)” state but is also a “Right to Remain a Wage Slave” state. That disastrous bill was restricted in 2018, yet workers in Idaho are still liable for legal action — and are lacking when it comes to survival, let alone economic self-determination. This is yet another example of our anti-People legislature showing their true colors and serving their bosses. Our ‘small government’ and ‘free market’ legislature not only made it illegal for localities to raise the minimum wage ourselves, they not only passed SB 1159, the Revenge against Voters bill to undermine our say in our government via ballot initiative, as provided by Article 3 Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution (which Gov. Little vetoed and Rep. Sage Dixon introduced to the House), but this crooked legislature also directly undermined the rights of workers to seek better employment — as the free market hypothetically allows.
It is time we remind yet again who they (ought to) serve. We closed the Medicaid Gap via initiative with 61 percent of the popular vote. Next we will close the wage gap! It is only a matter of time before we close the gap between the People’s needs and our corrupt legislature!
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Daniel Radford is the founder of North Idaho Democratic Socialists of America.