What's Good for the Goose

For those who enjoy reading about instances of political schadenfreude there's a particularly amusing instance unfolding in the presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders, who owns three homes and has made himself wealthy on a senator's salary despite being an arrant socialist and claiming to champion the poor and downtrodden, has demanded that employers pay workers at least $15 an hour.

Now his own campaign workers have publicly complained that they themselves were being paid less than $15 an hour by the senator.

The Washington Post provides us the details:

Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.

Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.

Sanders has made standing up for workers a central theme of his presidential campaigns — this year marching with McDonald’s employees seeking higher wages, pressing Walmart shareholders to pay workers more and showing solidarity with university personnel on strike.

The independent from Vermont has proudly touted his campaign as the first presidential effort to unionize its employees, and his defense of the working class has been a signature element of his brand of democratic socialism and a rallying cry for the populist movement he claims to lead.

There's much more on the story at the link.

The campaign organizers are actually making about $13/hour while working 60 hour weeks. So what has the Sanders campaign done to rectify this injustice?

As Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media writes:

Forcing companies to pay a higher wage leads employers to seek out less expensive automation, fire increasingly expensive workers, or cut the hours employees can work. Sanders opted for the third choice.

Rather than pay his workers more Sanders opted to cut back on their hours. How this helps minimum wage workers achieve sustainability is not clear, but if you're a progressive you don't have to be consistent or able to give a rational defense for your actions.

You just have to have your heart in the "right place."