Democrat Party Sued in Labor Scandal Despite Minimum Wage Policy Platform

It’s been said before that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have standards at all, and a new DNC lawsuit proves this is clearly the case when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are.

Bernie Sanders rallied behind “Fight for Fifteen,” a group supporting a $15 an hour minimum wage, during his presidential campaign. Unfortunately for those who interned for the candidate, they really would’ve had to wait for him to become president to earn such a wage, as they only earned $12 an hour.

Elizabeth Warren meanwhile wonders why the minimum wage isn’t $22 an hour (Here’s why not), but doesn’t pay her interns at all. Women who are lucky enough to work for the equal pay champion will find their wages equaling only 71 percent of their male counterparts.

Progressive heroes like Bernie and Warren are hardly the only ones. According to a study from the Employment Policies Institute, 96% of Democrat Congressmen who support raising the minimum wage don’t pay their interns. The study noted that “the same Members of Congress who are supporting a 40% wage hike on private sector employers are simultaneously failing to provide any wages to their own employee interns.”

The hypocrisy even stretches to the scandal-prone DNC, who is now at the center of a major lawsuit for wage theft.

Dozens of field workers have filed a class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee, claiming the party that is pushing employers to pay a $15 minimum wage and more in overtime failed to pay overtime and minimum wages to its own employees.

Justin Swidler, the attorney representing the field workers, argued the Democratic Party failed to pay workers a minimum wage and denied them overtime compensation. Swidler “says the lawsuit seeks ‘fair pay for fair work,’ and holding the Democratic Party to the very ideals that it embraces,” according to CBS Philly.

The 2016 Democratic platform pushed for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, a nearly $8 increase from the current minimum, and promised to defend an Obama-era regulation forcing employers to pay a higher rate to employees for working more than 40 hours.

Some of the Democrats’ workers put in 80-90 hours per week, according to Swidler, and got only $3,000 per month in compensation. “They got paid a flat salary of $3,000 a month, which isn’t even minimum wage for some of the hours that they were working,” Swidler said.

That comes as the Democrat platform stated that the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 is a “starvation wage,” believing that “no one who works full time should have to raise a family in poverty.”

Unless you’re employed by a Democrat, apparently.

According to Swidler, “One of the arguments that the Democrats are making is that they just don’t have the money to pay overtime to their workers.” Of course, the DNC’s budget is public information. Thanks to OpenSecrets, we can see that the DNC raised $372,182,925 in 2016, spent $368,480,666, and had $11,788,858 in cash on hand.

What’s more likely, that they “don’t have the cash,” or that they just don’t want to spend it?

The Democrats seem to be in real trouble. The chairman of their party gets booed by party members, and now this lawsuit.

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By Matt

Matt is the co-founder of Unbiased America and a freelance writer specializing in economics and politics. He’s been published... More about Matt

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