Declining wages hurt our society

Shirley W. Schludecker, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding Jack Oliver’s Saturday letter to the editor, headlined “Rising salaries costing American jobs”:

To sell a product, buyers are necessary. If Americans earn less than what is the minimum wage, how will they be able to buy anything but the basic necessities? The wages of middle-class workers have been declining. New hires in the automobile industry make about $14 an hour compared with $24 an hour before. They will not be able to buy one of the cars they help produce.

Unions and the threat of unionization have helped create the working conditions we have enjoyed — the eight-hour day, the five-day workweek, two-week vacations every year, medical insurance, lunch and break periods, a safe working environment, child labor laws and more.

I worked for a salary for 45 years as did my husband. We never got rich, but we bought a car, a house and educated our kids. We couldn’t have done that on minimum wage.

The countries that are manufacturing goods can only sell those goods if someone can buy them. We must educate and innovate to keep from declining as a society by lowering our wages and standards of living. The race to the bottom must stop.