Cleaning and concessions workers plan to walk off their jobs in federal buildings Wednesday and march on the White House, where they’ll demand President Obama wield his executive authority to raise the labor standards for their taxpayer-funded jobs. Organizers expect turnout for the work stoppage to outstrip the fledgling union-backed group’s first strike May 21, which drew just over a hundred Washington, DC workers. [...]
Of course, not everyone on a federal contract is just scraping by. The progressive think tank Demos – which previously published a report estimating that about two million workers make $12 per hour or less while doing taxpayer-supported jobs – tonight is releasing a new study arguing that big raises for sub-contracted workers could be paid for simply by capping their boss’ salaries. The study, “Underwriting Executive Excess: Inside a $7 Billion Subsidity of Inequality,” tallies the cost of compensating top contractor executives at 23.9 billion taxpayer dollars a year. “If taxpayer-funded payouts for these executives were capped at $230,700 – the salary of the U.S. Vice President – the pay of hundreds of thousands of low-wage federal contract workers could be raised by as much as $6.69 per hour,” write authors Robert Hiltonsmith and Amy Traub.
