Living Wage

Fast Track Not A Done Deal, The People Will Stop It

January 18, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Climate Change, Corporatism, Crony capitalism, Extreme Energy, fast track, Internet, Living Wage, TAFTA, TPP, TTIP, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

The corporate media is reporting that since the Republican leadership and President Obama support Fast Track trade authority, it is a done deal. And that message, also heard by countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is driving the race to finalize that agreement. The truth is: Fast Track is not a done deal. There is bi-partisan opposition in Congress and a large movement of movements organized to stop it. Members of both parties know that Obama will be out of office when the negative impacts of these trade agreements are felt. Congress will be alone facing an angry electorate while Obama is raising money for his post-presidential career from the transnational corporations who get rich off these agreements at the expense of everyone else. Members of both parties know that Obama will be out of office when the negative impacts of these trade agreements are felt. Congress will be alone facing an angry electorate while Obama is raising money for his post-presidential career from the transnational corporations who get rich off these agreements at the expense of everyone else.

Newsletter: Breaking The Spell Of The Corporate State

January 10, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Climate Justice, Democracy, Extreme Energy, Healthcare, Internet, KXL pipeline, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Net Neutrality, Racism, TPP, Trade, Vermont, Zapatistas

The democracy crisis grows deeper. Analysis of the mid-term elections shows voting levels lower than the era of Andrew Jackson, when the requirement of owning property to vote was removed. People are rejecting both political parties as 42% of Americans are registered independents compared to 30% Democrats and 25% Republicans. Nozomi Hayase writes people are breaking the spell of the corporate state, recognizing the elites who govern are not smarter than the rest of us, that they fit the characteristics of psychopaths for their endless war, debt-ponzi schemes and that the ongoing financial crisis exposes their agenda of hoarding wealth for themselves. At the same time Hayase writes: “Civil disobedience against the corporate state demands that we disobey their commands and instead begin listening to our hearts that know what is right and wrong.”

Newsletter: 2015, The Year We Build Power Together

January 2, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Climate Change, Extreme Energy, Inequality, Living Wage, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism, TPP, Worker Rights and Jobs

“2015 The Year We Build Power Together” is the major task we see for the movement this year. In 2014 we saw tremendous growth of the movement across numerous fronts of struggle – worker rights and the wages, racism and policing, climate, the environment and extreme energy extraction, building a new economy and so much more. We also saw how uniting and working in solidarity is a foundational requirement for success. “Building power together” means building on the 2014 successes of creating a larger and bolder movement that is beginning to work together as a movement of movements and recognizes that we are building our unified power because all of our issues are connected. If the people defeat transnational corporate power in the first big confrontation of 2015, we will be on our way to making 2015 the year we built our power together. We will be freed to create the world in which we want to live and one that increases the chances of a livable future.

Minimum Wage To Increase By Not Enough In 20 States Today

January 2, 2015 Brendan O'Connor, www.gawker.com Create! Labor Rights, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

Minimum wage increases go into effect in 20 states today, bringing the total of states that exceed the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour to 29. The increases, of course, are marginal at best. New Jersey's minimum wage, for example, has increased to $8.38/hour from $8.25—a result of automatically adjusting for inflation. A report by the New Jersey Policy Perspective found that a "survival budget" in that state for a single person would require a wage of $13.78/hour. "That's going to be unnoticeable, really," Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, told the New York Times. "If you're talking about an increase of a buck or two bucks, then maybe there's some kind of noticeable effect."

Retailers Targeted In Price Tag Switch For Living Wage

December 28, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

Amid the hubbub of the holiday shopping season, activists in the United Kingdom have been surreptitiously calling on the nation's largest retailers to raise their wages and "stop scrooging" their employees. Activists with the campaign, which launched in early December and will continue through the New Years shopping rush, are replacing the price tags at Britain's most profitable chains with fake labels demanding corporate store owners adopt a live wage, which they estimate is £7.85 in the UK or £9.15 in London (which roughly equals $12.21 and $14.23). The national minimum wage in the UK is £6.50, or about $10, an hour. According to one of the campaign organizers, the UK-based group Share Action, retail is responsible for 28 percent of the more than 5 million workers in the UK who are paid less than a living wage.

Walmart Manager Wanted To ‘Shoot Everyone’

December 13, 2014 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org Resist! Corporatism, Labor Unions, Living Wage, Walmart

Raymond Bravo, a former Walmart employee in Richmond, CA, decided to go on strike with his co-workers back in November 2012 because they were tired of being disrespected. After their white manager made a racially charged comment, enough was enough. “This manager, Van Riper, told one of the associates who was a member—they were pulling a shelf with rope around his waist—and he told him that he’d like to put that rope around his neck,” Bravo said. “And the associate is African American.” Following the strike, Walmart gave the workers two writeups. Workers can only get three writeups before being placed on a probation period in which they can get fired after their next mistake.

Low Wage Workers: “We Can’t Breathe”

December 7, 2014 Richard Long and Robert Borosage, www.ourfuture.org Resist! Class war, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Police abuse, Racism

As powerful protests of the New York Eric Garner grand jury decision – We can’t breathe – swept across the country, low wage fast food and retail workers walked off their jobs in some 180 cities, demanding a living wage and the right to organize. People are stirring, no longer willing to put up with an economic and political order that gives them no way to breathe. The Garner demonstrators are not looking for a technical fix – putting cameras on police, retraining them, de-militarizing them. They are demanding justice. The fast food and retail workers are also protesting injustice – an economic order in which they have no way to breathe. Their stories are heart-rending. They work for years at a minimum wage that forces them to rely on taxpayer subsidies for food and medical treatment. They are forced into part-time work with no routine schedules, making it impossible to do the planning needed to raise a child or hold the two or three jobs needed to support a family. They lose hours and lose their apartments. Their children live on edge of desperation. Any attempts to organize are crushed. They are disposables in multi-billion dollar chains where CEOs are paid – as the CEOS of McDonalds and Starbucks are paid — $9200 an hour. They cannot breathe.

The Incredible Shrinking Incomes Of Young Americans

December 6, 2014 Derek Thompson, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Living Wage, Millenials, Youth

Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care. Once you account for falling wages among young workers—if you must: "the Millennials"—many mysteries of the economic behavior of young people cease to be mysterious, such as this generation's aversion to home-buying, auto loans, and savings. Indeed, the savings rate for Americans under 35, having briefly breached after the Great Recession, dove back underwater and now swims at negative-1.8 percent.

Fast Food Workers Plan Nationwide Strike For Dec. 4

November 30, 2014 Ned Resnikoff, www.america.aljazeera.com Organize! Fast Food, Fight for 15, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

Fast food workers in at least 150 cities nationwide will walk off the job on Dec. 4, demanding an industry-wide base wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union. Workers unanimously voted on the date for the new strike during a Nov. 25 conference call, held shortly before the second anniversary of the movement’s first strike. The first of the recent fast food strikes took place on Nov. 29, 2012, in New York City. Two hundred workers from various fast food restaurants around the city participated in that strike, making it the largest work stoppage to ever hit the fast food industry. Since then, the size of the movement has ballooned several times over: With the backing of the powerful service sector labor union SEIU, the campaign has come to include thousands of workers in the U.S. The National Worker Organizing committee, a nationwide steering group of 26 fast food workers around the country, approved the Dec. 4 strike date before it was proposed to the rest of the workers. Workers from all 150 cities involved in the campaign were then invited to vote on the date over a Nov. 25 conference call. The proposal for a strike date was put forth by Burger King and Pizza Hut employee Terrence Wise, a leader in the Kansas City, Missouri branch of the committee.

Black Friday Strikes Escalate At Walmart Stores In DC

November 29, 2014 Resist! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Walmart, Worker Rights and Jobs, Worker's Rights

Three years ago it would have been unthinkable for a Walmart employee to walk off the job, especially on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. They would have been administratively disciplined or worse, terminated. But that is what happened on November 28 at the H Street Walmart in Washington, DC when several workers did not report to work, saying they were fed up with low wages, irregular schedules, reduced hours, and economic hardship. unnamed (11) “I worked 40 hours a week but was classified as a part time employee even though I was working full time,” said Glova Scott, a Walmart employee at the H Street location. She said her classification prevented her from qualifying for company benefit programs. Early Friday morning, several hundred supporters from the advocacy group Our Walmart, the AFL-CIO, and other labor groups marched with strikers to the H Street Walmart in northwest Washington to tell managers they wanted better pay and regular hours

Walmart Black Friday Protests Sweep The Nation

November 28, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Walmart

At Walmart, this year's Black Friday protests will be the widest-reaching ever, organizers say, with pickets and strikes planned at 1600 stores in 49 states to remind shoppers that the people serving them often can't afford to feed themselves. "I have to depend on the government mostly," says Fatmata Jabbie, a 21-year-old single mother of two who earns $8.40 an hour working at a Walmart in Alexandria, Virginia. She makes ends meet with food stamps, subsidized housing, and Medicaid. "Walmart should pay us $15 an hour and let us work full-time hours," she says. "That would change our lives. That would change our whole path. I wouldn't be dependent on government too much. I could buy clothes for my kids to wear." The nation's largest employer, Walmart employs 1.4 million people, or 10 percent of all retail workers, and pulls in $16 billion in annual profits. Its largest stockholders—Christy, Jim, Alice, and S. Robson Walton—are the nation's wealthiest family,collectively worth $145 billion. Yet the company is notorious for paying poverty wages and using part-time schedules to avoid offering workers benefits. Last year, a report commissioned by Congressional Democrats found that each Walmart store costs taxpayers between 900,000 and $1.75 million per year because so many employees are forced to turn to government aid.

More Than 2,250 Walmart Stores Set To Strike

November 27, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Strikes, Walmart

For the third Black Friday running, America’s largest retailer is expected to face labor protests at locations across the country. Workers and supporters affiliated with the union-backed labor campaign OUR Walmart say this Friday will be their biggest strike yet. OUR Walmart first burst onto the scene two years ago, when it used Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, to launch an unprecedented, nationwide strike against Walmart. The group originally demanded that Walmart pay all employees a base salary of at least $25,000 per year, but has since joined with striking fast food workers in demanding at least $15 per hour. Workers affiliated with OUR Walmart claim the retailer pays so little that some employees don’t even have the means to feed their families.

Black Friday Strikes: Walmart Workers Begin Walking Off Jobs

November 26, 2014 OUR Walmart, www.PopularResistance.org Organize! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Walmart

Walmart workers—members of OUR Walmart—started striking today in cities across the country, saying they couldn’t wait until Black Friday to protest the company’s disregard for their rights to speak out for jobs that will let them feed their families. The strikes, which will continue through Black Friday, come days before what are expected to be the largest strikes and protests ever at 1,600 Walmart stores. The news comes as Americans nationwide are standing up against the vast injustices created by powerful people and institutions. Last night in Washington, DC, hundreds of protestors marched through the city—including peacefully entering Walmart’s new store on H Street. Workers in Virginia and Washington, DC are on strike for the first time today and are joined today by workers walking off the job in cities and towns in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Maryland, Oregon, Minnesota, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. “I know I’m risking a lot by going on strike,” said Glova Scott, who is paid $10.90 working at the company’s new Washington, DC store. “But we cannot continue to let the Waltons and Walmart retaliate against us and ignore our rights when we are calling for wages and hours that will let us feed our kids. Walmart needs to treat us with respect and dignity.” Even as Walmart brings in $16 billion in annual profits and Walmart’s owners build on their $150 billion in wealth, the majority of Walmart workers are paid less than $25,000 a year. The workers and their supporters have been calling on the company to pay workers a minimum of $15 an hour and provide consistent, full-time work.

Sawant Among Those Arrested At Minimum Wage Protest

November 21, 2014 Cathy McLain and Paige Cornwell, www.seattletimes.com Resist! Kshama Sawant, Living Wage, Protest

Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant was arrested after she failed to disperse during a protest outside of Alaska Airlines headquarters in SeaTac Wednesday evening. Sawant was one of four people arrested when they stayed in the middle of a street at a protest calling for a $15 minimum wage for all workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The other people arrested were a cargo handler, a former airport worker and a church reverend. Sawant said before the protest started that it was her “obligation as a public servant” to exercise civil disobedience and risk arrest. In a statement issued Wednesday, Alaska Airlines said it supports fair-wage jobs and voluntarily increased wages in April for more than 1,000 vendor employees.

Maximum Progress On The Minimum Wage

November 7, 2014 Amy Goodman, www.truthdig.com Organize! Citizens United, Environment, Fracking, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

Beyond the hyperbole, beneath the pronouncements of pundits, strong currents are moving, slowly shifting our society. One movement that shined through the electoral morass demanded an increased minimum wage. It prevailed, even in some of the reddest of states. Going against partisan trends, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota approved ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, as they did in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. In Illinois and several Wisconsin counties, both states that elected Republican governors, significant majorities passed nonbinding ballot proposals to increase the minimum wage. Since the Republicans (and some Democrats) in Congress have consistently blocked an increase in the national minimum wage, people are taking control of the issue in their communities, and finding resounding support across the political spectrum.

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