Minimum Wage

Over 200 Small Business Restaurant Owners And Employers Endorse Raise The Wage Act

February 19, 2021 Brett Wilkins, Commondreams. Create! Congress, Low Wage Workers, Minimum Wage, Restaurants

As the small restaurant sector reels from the devastating economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a report published Thursday by advocates for tipped workers and a $15 minimum wage revealed that phasing out subminimum wages for such workers—which can be as low as a little over $2 an hour—does not cause businesses to close. In fact, the report—published by the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley and One Fair Wage—found that the five states with the greatest rate of decline in open hospitality businesses during the pandemic are all states with a subminimum wage. That wage was set at $2.13 under a 1996 federal law resulting largely from lobbying by then-National Restaurant Association president Herman Cain.

Red States Cut Worker Pay By $1.5 Billion

August 17, 2019 By Negin Owliaei, Otherwords.org Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Last month, the House voted to incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If the Senate passes the bill, it would be the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade — far too long for residents of the 21 states that don’t have their own higher minimum wage. Here’s another sad truth: Plenty of cities in those states have tried to raise their minimum wage, only to be stymied by state lawmakers. That’s thanks to state preemption laws that keep localities from adopting all kinds of policies, from paid sick leave to local fracking bans to wage increases.

NYC’s $15 Minimum Wage Helped Restaurants Thrive

August 11, 2019 Allana Akhtar, Business Insider. Create! Minimum Wage, New Economy, Workers Rights and Jobs

New York City restaurant workers saw their pay increase by 20% after a $15 minimum-wage hike, and a new report says business is booming despite warnings that the boost would devastate the city's restaurant industry. As New York raised the minimum wage to $15 this year from $7.25 in 2013, its restaurant industry outperformed the rest of the US in job growth and expansion, a new study found. The study, by researchers from the New School and the New York think tank National Employment Law Project, found no negative employment effects of the city increasing its minimum wage to $15. Restaurant workers in the city saw a pay increase of 20% to 28%, representing the largest hike "for a big group of low-wage workers since the 1960s," James Parrott, a director of economic and fiscal policies at the New School and an author of the study, told Gothamist.

CBO Report Shows Broad Benefits From Higher Minimum Wage

July 10, 2019 By Heidi Shierholz, Epi.org Create! Class Struggle, Inequality, Minimum Wage, New Economy, Workers

This afternoon, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report assessing the economic impact of raising the minimum wage to $15 in 2025 in six steps (this is a similar policy to the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase the minimum wage to $15 in 2024). The key fact coming out of the report is that CBO finds that the benefits to low wage workers of a $15 minimum wage far exceed the costs. The report finds that a $15 minimum wage would increase the wages of millions of low wage workers, increase the average incomes of low and lower-middle-income families...

This Is The Longest The Federal Minimum Wage Has Ever Gone Without Being Raised

June 17, 2019 Dave Jamieson, Huffpost.com Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Lawmakers set a new record Sunday by leaving the federal minimum wage untouched since July 24, 2009, the first year of former President Barack Obama’s first term. The rate hasn’t been increased from $7.25 in a whopping 3,615 days, making it the longest dry spell since the federal minimum wage was enacted under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938. That surpasses a previous milestone set between 1997 and 2007, when then-President George W. Bush signed minimum wage legislation.

Millions Of Workers Are Paid Less Than The ‘Average’ Minimum Wage

May 5, 2019 By Ben Zipperer and David Cooper, Economic Policy Institute Educate! Inequality, Living Wage, Minimum Wage

After 10 years of inaction at the federal level, so much of the policy work being done to boost wages for low-wage workers is happening at the state and local level. Yet, it is important to recognize that even with state and local governments taking action in many places, there are still millions of workers being paid significantly lower wages than the “average” minimum wage as calculated in the Upshot piece. In fact, raising the federal minimum wage to $11.80 would directly lift wages for 18.6 million workers, or 12.8 percent of the wage-earning workforce. Moreover, calculating the average effective minimum wage is very sensitive to how one defines the workforce affected by the policy. One would arrive at a much lower average minimum wage if considering the broader low-wage workforce for whom minimum wage policy is relevant.

Maryland Becomes Sixth State To Raise Minimum Wage To $15 An Hour

April 8, 2019 By Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox.com Create! Maryland, Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Maryland just became the sixth state to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. On Thursday, lawmakers managed to override Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a minimum wage bill. Maryland’s current minimum wage is $10.10, and the new policy willgradually raise the wage floor to $15 by 2025. Hogan had blocked the bill earlier this week, claiming that such a change would “devastate” the economy. But it was clear early on that he would be unable to stop the national momentum building around a $15 minimum wage.

Illinois Workers Celebrate As ‘Life-Changing’ $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage Signed Into Law

February 20, 2019 By Jessica Corbett, Commondreams.org Create! Illinois, Minimum Wage, New Economy, Workers

"Fifteen dollars an hour will be life-changing for me. I can barely afford the basic needs for my two sons on my minimum-wage salary. Simple things like whether to buy school supplies for my older boy or formula and diapers for my little one become agonizing choices," said Fight for $15 member Ieshia Townsend, who works a McDonald's in Chicago. Reflecting on the past six years of grassroots organizing to raise wages across the state, Townsend shared that "as a single mom and a Black woman on the south side of Chicago, I felt invisible before I joined the Fight for $15 and a union. But by coming togethe and speaking out, our voices have been heard." While welcoming the victory on Tuesday, she vowed to continue the fight for a union.

I Was A Student Worker Fighting For A $15 Wage. Now, I’m Facing A Criminal Record.

February 4, 2019 Ina Padua, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Class Struggle, Minimum Wage, Students, Workers

On Monday, February 4, I will have my day in court in New Brunswick, New Jersey. That’s not where I’d like to be spending my morning. I’d rather be at my office in DC working on getting back-pay for federal contract workers. But on Monday, 11 of my former classmates and I will march into the courtroom with our lawyer and defend ourselves against the charges brought upon us by our alma mater—Rutgers University. On December 12, 2017, dozens of students, workers, and activists of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) staged a peaceful protest asking the Board of Trustees to give campus workers like me $15 an hour and a union contract.

Abolish Wage Slavery: Productivism As An Extractive Industry

January 13, 2019 Scott Tucker, Counterpunch. Educate! Jobs and Wages, Minimum Wage, Socialism

The alienation of labor takes many forms, including the outright ownership of slaves. When big mills and factories were introduced under systems of waged labor, elements of judgment and craft were still preserved among workers because otherwise the machinery would not run at all. Streamlining assembly lines became one of the innovations of the Ford factory system, and his best paid workers were able to buy the basic model cars. In this sense, Fordism was already emerging as an industrial model concurrently with the time and motion studies of the Taylor System.

Movement Victory: Over Five Million Workers Will Have Higher Pay On January 1

December 31, 2018 By David Cooper, Epi.org Create! Class Struggle, Minimum Wage

On January 1, 2019, 20 states will raise their minimum wages, lifting pay for 5.3 million workers across the country.1 The increases, which range from a $0.05 inflation adjustment in Alaska to a $2.00 per hour increase in New York City, will give affected workers approximately $5.4 billion in increased wages over the course of 2019. Affected workers who work year-round will see their annual pay go up between $90 and $1,300, on average, depending on the size of the minimum wage change in their state.

People Earning Minimum Wage Cannot Afford To Rent Anywhere In The US

June 16, 2018 Laura Paddison, Huffingtonpost.com.mx Educate! Affordable Housing, Minimum Wage, New Economy

The figures are from the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual Out Of Reach report, which documents the affordability of rental housing to low-income families across the U.S. NLIHC arrived at its bleak findings by taking the cost of a modest two-bed rental home at fair market rent, as calculated by the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) based on an estimate of what a family moving today would expect to pay. It then calculated the amount workers need to earn for these homes to be “affordable” – meaning they spend no more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. The most expensive state is Hawaii, where the fair market rent for a two-bed rental is $1,879 a month, meaning workers need to bring in $36.13 an hour for rent to be affordable.

Teen Voices In The Fight To Raise The Minimum Wage In Massachusetts

May 24, 2018 By Jessicah Pierre, Inequality.org Organize! Class Struggle, Labor, Minimum Wage, Workers Rights and Jobs

Norma Meza is an 18-year-old student at Charlestown High School in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Growing up, she watched her mother battle health issues such as kidney failure, lupus, and ulcers. Despite working full-time, her mother struggled financially to keep the family afloat. Norma knew as early as 14 years old that she would have to get a job to help her mother pay the bills and put food on the table. Since then she’s worked a number of jobs to help contribute to her family’s income while gaining important work skills. “I’ve worked as an office assistant and learned in the process how to answer phone calls, assisting families who spoke Spanish,” said Norma. “After that I worked as a camp counselor for 2 years where I learned leadership, communication skills, and how to be a role model.”

Ethiopian Unions Pitch For Minimum Wage In Garment Sector

May 18, 2018 Umer Beigh, Thedawn-news.org Organize! Ethiopia, Exploitation, Garment Factories, Labor, Minimum Wage, Workers

Unions in Ethiopia are attempting to mobilize textile and garment workers, who are facing a massive wage crisis – most of the workers are forced to work under twenty Ethiopian Birr (ETB) per day, which is less than one dollar. The 600 or so ETB, which a large section of the country’s workers earns monthly, are hardly enough to meet their minimum needs. The condition of the workers has worsened since the political crisis of 2017, when hundreds of people were killed during protests that rocked the country, leading to a state of emergency for the past 10 months. Regional businesses and the transportation sector have been immensely affected during this period, further adding to the misery of these workers, who live on the margins of society.

‘We’ll Shut Down Economy’

May 3, 2018 Naziziphiwo Buso, Heraldlive.co.za Resist! Class Struggle, Minimum Wage, South Africa, Workers Rights and Jobs

South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has threatened to shut down the economy if the proposed national minimum wage is implemented. Vavi was speaking at a May Day rally at the Lilian Ngoyi Sports Centre in Kwazakhele, Port Elizabeth. “We need a total shutdown of this economy for a minimum of two days. We want to occupy every city,” he said. “We won’t move until they withdraw this attack on workers.” Saftu is demanding a living wage of at least R12 500 a month, while the proposed minimum wage is R3 500 a month, or R20 an hour. “If the economy is going through hell, let the economy go through hell for everyone,” Vavi said.

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