6
LC DBM
Minimum Wage
vs. American Youth
Have you seen all the news about cities passing
laws raising minimum wage to $15 an hour?
My question is . . . When did working the
french fries at McDonald's or digging the irriga-
tion pipe trench by hand become a career? When
I was a kid, I worked at McDonald's, Jack in the
Box, Dunkin' Donuts and several other no name
restaurants, all at minimum wage. I worked land-
scape; I worked as a furniture mover; I worked
on an assembly line . . . I worked at whatever I
could . . . The jobs weren't great and certainly not
a career, but as a teenager I got to earn money,
develop a work ethic and hang with a bunch of
other kids my age who were all doing what I was
doing . . . We were all off the couch, learning what
it meant to earn our freedom and independence,
and earning the opportunity to buy our first car,
get a Walkman, go on dates and have fun spend-
ing our hard earned money.
Today, you hardly ever see kids working those
jobs. In the inner city it just isn't cool to put on
the uniform of a fast food restaurant, let alone do
the back breaking work of landscape . . . Today,
while an entire generation of teenagers sits on
their hands, we see middle aged adults, mostly
immigrants from nations where $8-9 dollars a
day is more normal than $8-9 an hour, working
those jobs.
At $15 an hour, the 16-year-old sweeping the
back of McDonald's, or the kid on your crew who
hoses off the lawn mowers or drops off the load at
the dump is now supposed to be pulling in $31k
a year!?! So what do you do . . . Well first off you
don't hire a kid anymore, because at that rate you
can no longer afford to train someone as flakey as
a teenager . . .
Somehow today, with real unemployment in
the tens of millions, we have immigrants crashing
our borders looking for and taking jobs that were
traditionally meant for the up and coming youth
of our nation.
When I was a kid, we did the residential land-
scape maintenance in our neighborhood. Almost
every kid I knew at one point or another got his
dad's lawn mower and went around the neighbor-
hood mowing, blowing and edging. That's how
we got experience to become entrepreneurs and
businessmen. But now, especially in landscape,
where a large number of the companies are made
of immigrants who traditionally hire brothers,
cousins and extended family members and more
often than not pay those members in cash (and
in my estimation not $15/hour), the businessman,
regardless of age, who tries to compete in these cit-
ies by following the law is at a real disadvantage.
Also, we are now seeing workers who are getting
the higher minimum wage asking for less hours
so they can still meet welfare and subsidy levels.
What these policies say and do, and especially
with an administration advocating anarchy at ev-
ery level is: Obey the law, hire young Americans,
provide a platform for skill building and you lose.
Disobey the law, keep our kids on the couch, pay
under the table and you gain.
Call me whatever you like, but with my north-
ern European heritage, I believe that hard, honest
work should be the norm, not the exception. And
I believe that getting a job as a kid is one of the
most important things that one can do and teach
others to do. I don't care where you came from or
what you look like, if you don't agree with that,
you will not get my respect.
So what's my point? My point is that from my
experience the vast majority of LC/DBM readers
got into landscape at the lowest level, working
at minimum wage and doing the hard work of a
minimum wager earner. But at $15/hour this door
will shut.
I think the state landscape associations and the
National Association of Landscape Professionals
(formerly PLANET) should protest these cities,
stand against raising the minimum wage, stand for
the youth of America and begin to promote the
landscape industry as a profession where one can
start at minimum wage and work themselves up
the ladder into the possibility of entrepreneurship.
Our minimum wage laws and immigration pol-
icies should be about protecting and encouraging
our youth to work, not replacing them. I think the
landscape industry can lead this charge . . .
- God Bless
Find Us Online:
@LandscapeComm @landscapeonline
@LandscapeOnline.com
George Schmok
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief
gschmok@landscapeonline.com
Mike Dahl
Editor
mdahl@landscapeonline.com
Michael Miyamoto
Editor
mmiyamoto@landscapeonline.com
Larry Shield
Product Editor
lshield@landscapeonline.com
Alli Martin
Assistant Editorial
amartin@landscapeonline.com
Editorial Contributors
Gerri Hansen, Allan Block; Todd Rooker, Todd Rooker Landscape
Design; Bryan Jones, Catherine Marshall, County Materials Corp.; Steve
Mitchell, Natures Elite Landscaping; Jessica Ciccarello, Techo Bloc;
David Silver, AAA Landscape Specialists; Dennis Kaiser
Art Director
Nicole Miller
nmiller@landscapeonline.com
Graphic Designer
Matthew Medeiros
mmedeiros@landscapeonline.com
Web / Graphics Assistant
Terrell Coleman
tcoleman@landscapeonline.com
Ad Coordinator
Oliver Calonzo
ocalonzo@landscapeonline.com
Advertising/Marketing
714-979-LASN (5276) x113 • 714-979-3543 (Fax)
Print Advertising Sales
Vince Chavira
vchavira@landscapeonline.com
Matt Henderson
mhenderson@landscapeonline.com
Kip Ongstad
kongstad@landscapeonline.com
Landscape Communications, Inc.
Chief Operations Officer C.O.O.
Mark O'Halloran
mohalloran@landscapeonline.com
Sales Administration
Cynthia McCarthy
cmccarthy@landscapeonline.com
IT Department
Web / Tech Manager
Jerry Short
jshort@landscapeonline.com
Event Production
Amy Deane
adeane@landscapeonline.com
Event Specialist
Margot Boyer
mboyer@landscapeonline.com
Trade Show Sales
Nathan Schmok
nschmok@landscapeonline.com
Cass D'Arlon
cdarlon@landscapeonline.com
Statistics
Eric Dixon
edixon@landscapeonline.com
Circulation / Fulfillment
Edward Cook
ecook@landscapeonline.com
Likkien Ralpho
lralpho@landscapeonline.com
Ana Linares
alinares@landscapeonline.com
Kosol Chim
kchim@landscapeonline.com
Inventory/Fullfilments
Javier Miranda
jmiranda@landscapeonline.com
D E S I G N • B U I L D • M A I N T A I N • S U P P L Y
Equipping Landscape
Professionals for Success
w w w.LandscapeOnline.com
Volume 18, No. 08 • www.landscapeonline.com
George Schmok, Publisher
DBM
LC
1 John 4:16b-17 … God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God,
and God in him . . .
Landscape Contractor Design Build Maintain and/or the publisher is a member of or
financially supports the following associations: APA, CLCA, The Library of Congress
Association, IAAPA, ASLA, NRPA, National Wildlife Association, IES, IALD, IA, ISA, IECA, BPA,
APLD, National Parks and Conservation Association, IRLA, TPI, National Trust for Historic
Preservation, LAF/CLASS Fund, American Rivers and the American Institute of Architects.
Commentary