“circumvent minimum wage, overtime and anti-discrimination laws.”
Not me! Very few Socialists, when push comes to shove, will not walk the talk that they do with other peoples’ money with their own. And Kshama Sawant is no different. Remember, she was the Seattle politician that was absolutely adamant that companies, large and small, MUST be forced to pay their employees a minimum wage of $15/hour – or ELSE! Well, karma for Kshama (reformatted, emphasis mine):
A Seattle City council member is in a bit of hot water over her handling of campaign staffers. Kshama Sawant has allegedly structured her employees in a way that allows her to avoid payroll taxes, overtime, and insurance. Now, none of what she’s accused of allegedly doing is illegal — in fact, it’s very standard and necessary. But her own supporters — the folks who join her in her fight to demonize big business as exploiting the work force — are upset. We learned of this story over at Publicola — a progressive online offshoot of Seattle Met Magazine.
It turns out Sawant is spending a sizable portion of her campaign funds on five different campaign consultants, as she tries to win her re-election campaign for city council. She’s spent just over $12,000 for the consultants so far and that’s in stark contrast to her colleagues. Jean Godden has spent about $6,000. Council member Tim Burgess spent just over $2,000 on consultants; Mike O’Brien has spent nothing. And it’s the $12,000 Sawant is spending that has some folks wondering if she’s a hypocrite — because she’s not paying these consultants as employees, she’s paying them as contractors.
So what’s that mean? Why is that a big deal? According to Josh Feit at PubliCola, “there’s no sign of payroll taxes (such as unemployment insurance or social security payments).” And he writes, “Sawant has been skirting the rules by not paying into the public workers’ safety net.” And that’s where the cry of hypocrisy comes into place. According to the Stranger, its “a practice businesses are known to use in an effort to, as the New York Times points out, ‘circumvent minimum wage, overtime and anti-discrimination laws.'”
Indeed, the New York Times reported:
Companies that pass off employees as independent contractors avoid paying Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes for those workers. Companies do not withhold income taxes from contractors’ paychecks, and several studies have indicated that, on average, misclassified independent workers do not report 30 percent of their income.One federal study concluded that employers illegally passed off 3.4 million regular workers as contractors, while the Labor Department estimates that up to 30 percent of companies misclassify employees.
It’s the exact type of conduct Sawant and her allies have used to criticize “evil big business.” So why is it OK that Sawant is doing it? How isn’t this hypocritical?
Good question. Answer: it is who they are. They feel they are above the rest of us and will do what they want to. The end justifies the means and if corners have to be cut by them to achieve those ends, well, so be it. What’s important is the Glorious Revolution that is close at hand – it will be a veritable Utopia of our own making!
