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Minimum Wage

LA’s New Minimum Wage Isn’t Worth Anywhere Close To $15

May 23, 2015 Ben Casselman, www.fivethirtyeight.com , , ,
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted to raise the city’s minimum wage to nearly $10 an hour. Oh, sure, the headlines in Wednesday’s papers all said the council raised the wage floor to $15 an hour. That’s what the actual ordinance says, too. But $10 is a more accurate reflection of what low-wage Angelenos will actually experience. There are two reasons for this. The first is inflation: Los Angeles’s minimum wage won’t go up to $15 tomorrow. Instead, the hike will be phased in over the next five years. Assuming inflation holds more or less steady, $15 an hour in 2020 will be worth the equivalent of about $13.75 today. But the bigger issue is that $15 doesn’t go as far in Los Angeles as it does in most of the rest of the country. Not even close. According to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research, it costs workers about 40 percent more to live in Los Angeles than in the average American community.

Largest Ever Worker Mobilization In US On Tax Day

April 14, 2015 Fight For 15, www.popularresistance.org ,
On Tax Day, fast-food workers from Pittsburgh to Pasadena will walk off the job, while adjunct professors, home care, child care, airport, industrial laundry and Walmart workers will march and rally in what will be the most widespread mobilization ever by U.S. workers seeking higher pay. The two-and-a-half-year-old Fight for $15 will go to college, with protests expected by students from 200 campuses. Activists organizing around #BlackLivesMatter will join in as the ties between the racial and economic justice movements deepen. And the marches and rallies will stretch around the globe, with protests expected in more than 100 cities, in 35 countries, on six continents, from Sao Paolo to Tokyo. The first global strikes coordinated with U.S. workers are scheduled for Italy and New Zealand.

Connecticut Bill Would Fine Corporations For Low Wages

April 14, 2015 Nina Liss-Schultz, www.rhrealitycheck.org , ,
Connecticut lawmakers are moving forward with a proposal that could effectively raise the minimum wage of many of the state’s low-wage workers to $15 an hour. The bill, SB 1044, would subject for-profit companies with 500 or more employees to a fine for every employee who is paid less than $15 an hour, essentially forcing those companies to raise wages or pay if they refuse. The bill would be the first of its kind in the country. Connecticut has in the past few years enacted other first-of-its-kind laws to support low-wage workers in the state, among them a 2011 law mandating paid sick leave for the hundreds of thousands of service employees in the state.

Small Percentage Of McDonald’s Workers Get Pay Raise

April 2, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
McDonald's plans to raise the average pay of about 90,000 of the 750,000 McDonald's US workers to around $10 an hour, but the increase will not benefit workers at the vast majority of the restaurants, because they are operated by franchisees, who make their own wage decisions. The pay increase, for workers at roughly 1,500 company-owned U.S. restaurants, will take effect on July 1. Starting wages at the restaurants will move to $1 above the locally mandated minimum wage. Workers groups said the move by McDonald's, which is also adding benefits such as paid vacations, fell short of their goals. The raise is only at "company-owned restaurants," only about 10% of its 14,350 stores nationwide. The rest are owned by franchisees, who "operate their individual businesses and make their own decisions on pay and benefits for their employees." The National Labor Relations Board general counsel ruled differently on Dec. 19 that the Oak Brook, Ill., company "engages in sufficient control over its franchisees' operations...to make it a putative joint employer with its franchisees, sharing liability for violations of our Act."

‘Seattle Is Getting A Raise’ Victory March

March 29, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org ,
Seattle, WA - More than 150 people gathered in front of Seattle Central College on Saturday, March 28 to celebrate an historic victory. On April 1, the minimum wage for Seattle workers is going up to either $10 r $11 per hour (depending on health benefits and tips), and by 2025 the minimum wage will be $15. Raising the minimum wage required a tremendous amount of organizing efforts and walkouts by workers at fast food residents. It is a feat that deserves celebrating, but passing the law was just the beginning. To make it effective, workers need to know their rights and employers have to follow the new law. So in addition to celebrating, the group marched through central Seattle and stopped at a number of restaurants along the way like Subway, Chipotle, Starbucks and IHOP.

Hundreds March In Atlanta Seeking Boost In Minimum Wage

March 23, 2015 Helena Oliviero, www.ajc.com , ,
Hundreds of people marched from Ebenezer Baptist Church to a McDonald’s restaurant a mile away Saturday afternoon demanding fast-food restaurants and other businesses lift the minimum wage. Carrying signs that said, “People and Planet over Profit,” the crowd of close to 500 flooded the fast-food restaurant. They chanted, “If we don’t get it, shut it down!” Robertson Anderson, 23, who has worked at McDonald’s for about two and a half years in the maintenance department was so moved, he walked off the job. Outside, he seemed visibly shaken, and he said he wasn’t sure whether he would return to his job.

Wal-Mart, Under Pressure, Boosts Wage To $9/hr

February 20, 2015 Sruthi Ramakrishnan and Nathan Layne, www.reuters.com , ,
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said it would raise entry-level wages to $9 an hour, a 24 percent increase from the U.S. minimum wage that some employees now earn, succumbing to longstanding pressure to pay its workforce more. The world's largest retailer said the increases would cost it $1 billion and impact 500,000 employees, or about 40 percent of its workforce, although the hike falls short of what some labor groups have been agitating for. The move comes amid a growing debate in the U.S. over the widening gulf between the rich and low-income workers. Wal-Mart has been a prime target of critics who say its low-wages and inflexible scheduling are a big part of the problem. The White House praised the move, pointing out that 17 states have already moved to boost their minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour and renewing its call on the Republican Congress to boost the wage on a national level.

Increasing Wage To Poverty Wage Is Not Enough

January 27, 2015 LeeAnn Hall, www.otherwords.org , ,
On New Year’s Day, 20 states raised their minimum wages. That leaves a lot of states that aren’t increasing the minimum wage — along with the federal government. Even some of those employees who are getting increases don’t have much to celebrate. Workers in Florida might barely notice their 12-cents-an-hour raise. And the extra 15 cents an hour in Montana, Arizona, and Missouri will be wiped out with inflation and climbing costs before the first paycheck is deposited. U.S. legislators have refused since 2009 to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour — not even close to enough for full-time workers to make ends meet.

Newsletter: Breaking The Spell Of The Corporate State

January 10, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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.”

Minimum Wage To Increase By Not Enough In 20 States Today

January 2, 2015 Brendan O'Connor, www.gawker.com , ,
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 , ,
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.

Low Wage Workers: “We Can’t Breathe”

December 7, 2014 Richard Long and Robert Borosage, www.ourfuture.org , , , , ,
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.

Newsletter: People Power Grows, Demands Justice

December 6, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , ,
This week tens of thousands of people in the United States flooded the streets to demand racial justice. It is one of many issues that has been building for years, reaching the tipping point and seeming to explode in a national awakening. We also saw that in the last two weeks with national protests for living wages. Four years ago when we organized the occupation of Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza, we listed 15 crisis issues that the country needed to face, poverty wages and the injustice in criminal enforcement, including racially abusive police practices, were two of them. None of these 15 core issues has been adequately dealt with. In each there are people working to build support for their cause; each has the potential to explode on the national scene – some already have. This newsletter highlights five current campaigns and mobilizations that are demanding social, economic and environmental justice.

Fast Food Workers Plan Nationwide Strike For Dec. 4

November 30, 2014 Ned Resnikoff, www.america.aljazeera.com , , ,
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 , , , ,
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
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