ACORN Refuses Own Employees Minimum Wage (Pt. 5)

How do they get away with this?

Thanks for tuning in to part five of this series on ACORN and the economic shell game they play with American workers. Click here for parts ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR.

ACORN pays below the living wage it advocates, yet bullies others into toeing the line. The Employment Policies Institute cites a recent example where ACORN pushed Santa Fe, New Mexico into a $9.50 citywide wage. Yet even after that went into effect, ACORN continued to advertise for organizers willing to work for $25,000 per year in 54-hour weeks that included nights and weekends. Calculated per hour, that $25,000 equals $8.90 per hour.

But ACORN doesn’t stop there. They consider minimum wage to be too much to pay their employees; they won’t advance them cash above that level.

Pay more, cut more

Case in point. The EPI draws our attention to a suit ACORN brought against the State of California in 1995. Their claim was that their operations in California should be exempted from the state minimum wage. Why, you ask? Here it is, straight from the legal brief:

As acknowledged both by the trial court and California, the more that ACORN must pay each individual worker – either because of minimum or overtime requirements – the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire.

Unbelievable. The irony here is palpable, considering what Wade Rathke had to say about businesses in New Orleans who ran afoul of ACORN’s minimum wage increase campaigns in 1996. The businesses expressed concerns similar to those ACORN raised in the above California legal brief. Wade Rathke responded to their concerns with the snappy comeback, “If their business is that marginal, they probably shouldn’t be in business.”

But ACORN is still in business…

And they have also refused to pay their own employees overtime until the federal government has compelled them to do so. Why anyone in a non-managerial position would want to work for ACORN baffles me. Since they don’t practice the justice they preach, they have no social conscience. READ ON to see just how scary a place ACORN can be for its employees.

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