Walkin' in New Orleans

Yesterday was another gorgeous spring day, and late in the afternoon my daughter and I walked through the Tulane campus, and as the glory of spring was overcoming me, I heard in the distance a speaker demanding economic justice and the right to organize. Seems Sodexo workers at Tulane and Loyola need street demonstrations to pump support for their agenda. While I could only hear bits of the appeal as I walked, CLEAN UP SODEXO has a post about it. The part where the guy making $8.12 an hour says he's had only a 24¢ and 12¢ raise in five years seems a little odd. In 2005, the minimum wage was $5.15/hr. I guess the real dollars received as a result of the minimum wage rising to its current level ($7.25) are not real raises. Thats not to say that $8.12 an hour is a living wage, but my bet is that the complaining worker has seen a lot more than 36¢ in raises in the last five years.