To Be An Owner, And A Worker

MARIJUANA IS NOW LEGAL in Colorado and Washington state, but nowhere else in the United States. Almost every large city in the country has has own minimum wage, every state has a minimum wage, and the federal government has a minimum wage. In most cases, all three minimum wages are different. If you happen to work in a mall which straddles two municipalities, you can quit your job at one end of the building, get hired on the other end, and improve your income by working in a higher minimum wage district. It can become rather confusing, a dance to determine what minimum wage is. Workers and employers, squared off against each other, doing their minimum wage dance. Federalism in action. How does one say "fragmentation"? The numerous methods by which corporations avoid paying workers well, and avoid paying taxes, is an amazing cobweb of strategies. One way is to move the corporation out of the country, after the fashion of Burger King. another is to declare that all employees are "independent contractors", after the fashion of Fed Ex. (they're the one's who wear brown, aren't they?) By declaring its delivery drivers independent contractors, Fed Ex is able to use federal law to reduce salaries, and to shift the burden of fuel, uniform, and vehicle maintenance costs to the workers, and away from corporate management. Ah, but alas, the ninth federal circuit court, in San Francisco, that bastion of liberal jurisprudence and bane of right wingers, recently issued a ruling that Fed Ex workers are indeed not independent contractors, owning and operating their own businesses, fulfilling the American dream. No, says the court, they are in fact employed workers, employees, because they are told how to dress, how to behave, when to work, and how to do their jobs. And really, under those circumstances, they don't sound much like business owners. Isn't the primary benefit of business ownership the prerogative to be one's own boss, to make one's own rules, to keep one's own schedule? When one owns one's own business, the court says, one does not accede to corporate rules from on high. Fed Ex, of course, the executive management thereof, properly indignant, claims, unsurprisingly, that hundreds if not thousands of legal precedents prove that they are right, and the court is wrong. The dirty little secret is, precedents, even if they actually exist, can be, and often are, overturned, by the United States federal court system. We'll see you at the Supreme court, where, one way or another, we can expect to be delivered a five to four decision.