The minimum wage is under attack, and not just in the US, not just on the Netherlands, not just in Britain. You may ask yourself “how did it come to this? Where did it start?”
I’ll tell you where: it started when prisoners were forced to work for pennies and many of us didn’t really try fight it because they were probably bad people, right? It started when disabled people were forced to work for pennies and many of us didn’t really try fight it because their work was just inferior to us, right? It started when unemployed and students were forced to do internship and ‘work experience jobs’ for free and many of us didn’t really fight it because we wanted to focus our intention on ‘real workers’.
But the bosses noticed, and learned, and looked for ways to expand these groups. Because they knew: if you don’t fight for one exploited worker, why fight for the next? If you let me have one forced worker for pennies, why not all of them? So when we say ‘no’ to that, we need to be sure to say it for all of us.