Minimum Wage in Las Vegas

The Trickle Up Theory

When the Real Estate boom was at its height, a distraught young woman, working a four day convention services job for nine dollars an hour lamented that there were no good jobs in Las Vegas.  She didn't know what she was going to do.  She had moved here, and now she couldn't find work that would allow her keep up with her bills.

Duh!  Why would anyone move without checking out the employment possibilities?  But they do and this woman did.  This is what I told her.  

All work in Las Vegas is minimum wage.  We don't have industry.  Office jobs, if you can find one, don't pay much over minimum wage.  Unless you want to work in the cleaners, the 7/11, or retail, don't come here. Casino jobs are minimum wage - or darned close to it.  People live on tips, and even that has dried up because of debit cards and ticket in-ticket out.  If we don't work for tips, we work at the bottom of the pay scale.  Can you teach?  If so, you'll make a little more.  Grocery stores have a union.  They do a little better in pay and benefits, but it's still retail.  I've known construction workers (illegal) who were working for twelve dollars an hour - less than half union scale.

Entertainers, if they can find work, are being offered less than they earned thirty years ago.  The Entertainment Capital and Gambling Capital of the World is no longer a place to live - at least if you want to make a living.  Now, if you're here for the weather, you've come to the right place.  I've never once, in twenty years, had to dig my car out of snow drift or worry about sliding on the ice.  It gets hot, but the day after it cools off you forget how hot it was and start saying to people on the street, "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

But what prompted me to write about the sad state of earning capability in Las Vegas was the fast food workers - I think it's McDonald's workers - picketing for higher wages.  They think having no education, and in many cases barely being able to speak English, entitles them to fifteen dollars an hour.  If they can get it, good for them.  But there is a "trickle up" problem with that.

I have a friend who has managed a Starbucks for years.  She feels the few people who work for her deserve to be paid a "living wage" as do all fast food workers.  She believes all CEO's make too much money.  That profit should be passed down to the people who make those profits possible.  I can't say I disagree with that sentiment.  Fifty years ago my father, a union carpenter who always worked for over scale, believed the same thing about the CEO's of GM, Ma Bell and the other major corporations,  BUT . . 

This is how "trickle up" works.  Fast food workers, most with little education, get their salary doubled.  Then the bottom of the rung college educated substitute teachers who are working for fourteen dollars an hour say, "I have a college education.  If fast food workers had their salaries doubled, mine should be doubled."  So that is done.  Now the regular teaching staff that is making twenty-five dollars an hour is ticked off because they've spent years in school getting master's degrees and probably still have school loans hanging over their heard.  They want their salary doubled, and it is.  Soon everyone's salary is doubled and what has happened?  Fast food workers are still at the bottom of the pay scale.  Everyone has gotten their salaries doubled.  The cost of everything we buy has risen in order to pay those new salaries, and the CEO's are still making obscene salaries with stock options.  

I like the dollar menu at fast food places. I like the ninety-nine cent stores.  It like the sound of "It's only a dollar."  I supposed I could get used to the dollar ninety-nine menu or the everything a dollar ninety-nine store, but why, when in the end, it's all the same.  Fast food workers won't move up the food chain with a living wage, they'll simply be paid more to stay in the same place they've always been. And in a few more years they'll want to double their salary again and everything will Trickle Up again.  

Equal Pay for Equal work

President Obama signed an executive order recently declaring that women should receive equal pay for equal work.  There's nothing wrong with that.

However, my question is . . . does this order also mean that women who are now paid more than men for doing the same job get a pay cut?!

In 2014, when men have been so emasculated by women's lib and by the laws already on the books, I sincerely doubt what they are paid has anything to do with what's in their pants.  

In regard to what women are paid - pay is about negotiation skills.  You get what you ask for - or demand.  If a woman doesn't ask, she doesn't get. Perhaps Obama's Executive Order should have been that ALL women be required to take a class in negotiation before applying for a job. 

Jubilee - Revisisted

Jubliee at Bally's

On Thursday night we went to see the revamped Jubilee show at Ballys.  Jubilee is the last surviving Showgirl show in Las Vegas. Beautiful, topless girls.  Extravagant costumes with feathers and  jewels.  The girls and Jubilee are Las Vegas history and a large part of why the city was called the entertainment Capital of the World.  The millennial version of showgirls in Las Vegas are the acrobats in the Circ shows.  Extravagant costumes but circus acts.

In Friday's issue of Neon, the entertainment section of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mike Weatherford reviewed the show.  It's always nice to find someone, especially  a venerable entertainment reporter like Weatherford, who agrees with all of your opinions. 

Frank Gaston, Jr., hired to revamp the show, may be a good choreographer and know the current version of a rock and roll show (he worked for Beyonce), but he does not understand putting on a major production show like Jubilee.

Only the last ten or fifteen minutes and a couple of numbers during the show were reminiscent of spectacular cabaret show glory.   

Both Weatherford and the friend I saw the show with, himself a choreographer of the highest standing, objected to the opening of the show when the star slides down a pole.  They both saw it as her sliding down a Stripper pole.  I did not.  I saw it as pure circus!  The stage is dark.  The spotlight snaps on and there is the star.  She does not slide down the pole like a fireman nor does she work it like a stripper.  She comes down like a well trained "bally broad" (a circus term for the girls who work above the ring, performing a ballet on the ropes). It was, in fact, one of my favorite parts of the show.  However, it all went into the toilet almost immediately.

The opening number was beautiful, although, I do not understand topless dancers in 2014, when you can see your favorite reality start or rock and roll performer naked or near naked anywhere on the internet, in their shows or on television.  I found the topless girls shocking when I first saw the show thirty years ago.  I find them distracting today.  The show is (or should be) spectacular enough not to need such nonsense.  I'd much rather be wondering where I could a fancy, jeweled bra than wondering if the dancer had breast implants or thinking she needs them.  

The narration throughout the beginning of the show makes little sense.  While the narrator is adequate, she sounds bored or bewildered by the whole thing.  In the beginning it seems that she it talking about the show Jubilee being revamped. In the second half of the narration you begin to realize she is talking about the star and finally, way too late in the story, the star is given a name - Katherine Jubilee.  Then, suddenly, the whole narration ends, and we finally get a show.

At one point the stage is completely vacant.  The action takes place overhead where half of the people in the audience can't see it.  I watched the people in front of me stare at the stage and begin to get antsy because nothing was happening in front of them for such a long period of time.  

The lighting for many of the numbers was horrible.  You can't enjoy something you can't see.  There was a raincoat and umbrella number with three male dancers that was good - except the lighting was so poor you had to struggle to see it . . . and it was completely out of place with the rest of the show. However, the dancers were excellent as was the choreography.

There was a long number that reminded me of an average "Platters/Coasters/Marvellettes" show, a little 50's walk down memory lane that has been on the Strip for close to twenty years. It was a boring, average few minutes that had no place in show like Jubilee.  It might have worked if the performers had Broadway stage presence.  They didn't.

All in all, the revamp of Jubilee was disappointing and needs a second re-do ASAP.  I went from wondering what the disconnected narration was about to looking at a blank stage to being bored with the 50's "stuff," to the lack of energy in the revamped Titanic number except for the last dance sequence, to wondering why the umbrella number was in the show and why I couldn't see it without straining, to - at last - the excitement and costumes of the showgirls in the finale.  Spectacular, spectacular costumes.  Thankfully, Gaston left that part of the show intact because the finale alone is worth the price of the ticket.