Minimum Wage

Fast-food Workers Ready To Escalate Wage Demands

July 26, 2014 AP, www.AP.org Resist! Fast Food, Labor, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Worker's Rights

Fast-food workers say they're prepared to escalate their campaign for higher wages and union representation, starting with a national convention in suburban Chicago where more than 1,000 workers will discuss the future of the effort that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years. About 1,300 workers are scheduled to attend sessions Friday and Saturday at an expo center in Villa Park, Ill., where they'll be asked to do "whatever it takes" to win $15-an-hour wages and a union, said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the national effort and a representative of the Service Employees International Union. The union has been providing financial and organizational support to the fast-food protests that began in late 2012 in New York City and have included daylong strikes and a protest outside this year's McDonald's shareholder meeting that resulted in more than 130 arrests. "We want to talk about building leadership, power and doing whatever it takes depending on what city they're in and what the moment calls for," said Fells, adding that the ramped-up actions will be "more high-profile" and could include everything from civil disobedience to intensified efforts to organize workers. "I personally think we need to get more workers involved and shut these businesses down until they listen to us," perhaps even by occupying the restaurants, said Cherri Delisline, a 27-year-old single mother from Charleston, S.C., who has worked at McDonald's for 10 years and makes $7.35 an hour.

Workers Speak Out Against Work Schedule Abuse And Retaliation

July 26, 2014 Emily Divito, www.ourfuture.org Educate! Labor, Minimum Wage, Women's Rights, Worker's Rights

When American women have no control over their own work schedules, they have no control over their own lives. Mary Coleman of Wisconsin knows this first-hand. She was working the night shift at a Milwaukee Popeye’s restaurant, a time slot notoriously unpopular for its exhausting hours. When she asked her manager for a transfer to the day shift, she was denied, lied to, and then penalized for even asking. Coleman’s manager told her that there were no more shifts available during daylight hours that she could have. But just weeks later, five new employees were hired to Popeye’s, all of whom were given day shifts. Simultaneously, Coleman’s hours were dramatically cut. She now only works two days a week. That is not nearly enough to live on. Coleman expressed her struggles at a Tuesday briefing in the Cannon House Office Building jointly hosted by the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Women’s Law Center. Coleman’s experience is like that of roughly 2.5 million other American women working in low-wage jobs who are at the mercy of their employers for consistent work, and so, for consistent pay.

Stop The War On The Poor Campaign

July 11, 2014 Stop the War on the Poor, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Social Security, Wars and Militarism

Stop the War on the Poor commemorates Martin Luther King Jr’s Poor People’s Campaign (PPC). In 1968, just prior to his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr condemned the Vietnam War and called for the PPC culminating in a Poor People’s March in DC in June, demanding a living wage and a guaranteed income. He said Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity andgenerosity”. Coretta Scott King spoke out against poverty and in support of welfare mothers. King learnt from welfare mothers. They had been calling for a poor people’s campaign and urging his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to oppose “anti-welfare” legislation and support their right to welfare. As a result of their leadership, King became anti-capitalist and anti-war.

States That Raised Minimum Wage Have Faster Job Growth

July 6, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate. The minimum wage went up in 13 states — Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is .99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is .68 percent.

Working Women Tell Obama: $10.10 Not Enough

June 26, 2014 Emily DiVito, www.ourfuture.org Organize! Barack Obama, Minimum Wage, Protest, Women's Rights

Joanne, a food service worker at the federal Ronald Reagan Building near the White House, took time off from her job Monday to join fellow federal contractor employees at a protest outside the Smithsonian National Zoo. As she explained her monthly budget, it was clear she had nothing much to lose. “I make just around $1,000 a month,” she said, “and I pay $500 for child care, and $250 just to ride the Metro to go to work. After that, I have nothing.” Even with her husband’s support, Joanne said she struggles to get by. Her salary of “$8.90 an hour is not enough,” she said. “I have no insurance, no holidays – nothing. My dream is to go to culinary school, and President Obama, you can help me make my dreams come true.” As a Summit on Working Families was underway at the White House, Joanne was with about 200 other women who work for federal contractors protesting at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

MA Passes Highest State Minimum Wage

June 22, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.org Create! Minimum Wage

On Wednesday night, the Massachusetts House passed a bill that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2017. The Senate already passed that wage level, and after a procedural vote there it will head to Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who is expected to sign it into law. An earlier Senate version of the bill would have also automatically increased the minimum wage as inflation rose, but that provision was dropped in the final version. An $11 wage is the highest passed by any state this year. Eight other states have increased their wages so far: Delaware and West Virginia went above $8 an hour;Michigan went up to $9.25; Minnesota increased its wage to $9.50; Hawaii,Maryland, and Connecticut passed a $10.10 wage; and Vermont went to $10.50 an hour. The $10.10 an hour level is what President Obama and Congressional Democrats had pursued for a federal hike, but Republicans blocked the move.

Increasing Wages Is An Effective Poverty Reduction Tool

June 20, 2014 Elise Gould, www.talkpoverty.org Create! Inequality, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Unions

Broad-based wage growth—if we can figure out how to achieve it—would dwarf the impact of nearly every other economic trend or policy in reducing poverty. Even in 2010, the bottom fifth of working age American households relied on wages for the majority (56%) of their income. When you add in all work-based income including wage-based tax credits, nearly 70% of income for low-income Americans is work-related. Yes, the targeted efforts to strengthen the safety net are well deserved. Programs such as food stamps (SNAP), unemployment insurance, and Social Security have helped reduce poverty over the last four decades. But market based poverty (or poverty measured using only income from wages) has been on the rise and the safety net has to work even harder to counterbalance the growing inequalities of the labor market. There was once a strong statistical link between economic growth and poverty reduction, but rising inequality has severed it, and the results are deeply dispiriting. If the statistical link between economic growth and falling poverty that held before the mid-1970s had not been broken by rising inequality, then poverty, as the government measures it, would be virtually eradicated today. Furthermore, the impact of rising inequality is nearly five times more important in explaining poverty trends than family structure.

Fight For 15 In NYC Just Got A Lot More Promising And Complicated

June 14, 2014 William Blueher and James Hoff, www.truth-out.org Resist! Bill De Blasio, Minimum Wage, New York (NY)

Bill de Blasio's role in helping Andrew Cuomo attain the endorsement of the Working Families Party has opened up a space for a more vigorous and radical discussion of a minimum wage for NYC. In politics, the greatest opportunities often present themselves amid the least promising of circumstances. The New York Working Families Party's (WFP) scandalous and much decried endorsement of Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 1 is but one example of how, out of the chaos of internal conflict, opportunities for more radical change can become possible. Though the WFP endorsement was a shameful capitulation to the politics of business as usual, it very well may have opened up a new front in the fight to raise the minimum wage in New York City. Though Cuomo had several times expressed opposition to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's longstanding plans to increase the city's minimum wage, the mayor's last minute role in securing the endorsement of the WFP for Cuomo seems to have changed the ground of that debate, and it is looking increasingly likely that Cuomo may now be more open to allowing the city to set its own minimum wage above the state level - with caveats, of course. By just how much and when the minimum wage (currently an insultingly low $8 an hour) might be increased remains to be seen, but it is clear that lawmakers in New York City and Albany, including de Blasio, are feeling the heat of the grassroots minimum wage movement that has been sprouting up in cities across the country - most notably in Seattle, which recently passed legislation increasing that city's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

How Corporations Get Away With Rampant Wage Theft

June 10, 2014 Myron Levin, Stuart Silverstein and Lilly Fowler, www.salon.com Educate! Law, Minimum Wage, Wage Theft

For workers stuck on the bottom rung, living on poverty wages is hard enough. But many also are victims of wage theft, a catch-all term for payroll abuses that cheat workers of income they are supposedly guaranteed by law. Over the last few years employers ranging from baseball’s San Francisco Giants to Subway franchises to Farmers Insurance have been cited for wage violations. More often, though, wage abuses are not reported by victims or punished by authorities despite being routine in some low-wage industries. “If you steal from your employer, you’re going to be hauled out of the workplace in handcuffs,” said Kim Bobo, a Chicago workers rights advocate and author. “But if your employer steals from you, you’ll be lucky to get your money back. Victims typically are low wage, low-skilled workers desperate to hang on to their jobs. Frequently, they are immigrants—the most vulnerable and least apt to speak up. “They know that if they complain, there’s always someone else out there who is willing to take their job,” said Maria Echaveste, a former labor official during the Clinton administration who is now at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. While heart-breaking for employees, wage theft also robs federal and state treasuries of many billions of dollars in taxes, and puts employers who play by the rules at a serious competitive disadvantage.

The History Of Raising Minimum Wage Ran Through Occupy

June 7, 2014 Peter Dreier, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Congress, Minimum Wage, Occupy

An idea that only a year ago appeared both radical and impractical has become a reality. On Monday, Seattle struck a blow against rising inequality when its City Council unanimously adopted a citywide minimum wage of $15 an hour, the highest in the nation. This dramatic change in public policy is partly the result of changes brought about by last November's Seattle municipal elections. But it is also the consequence of years of activism in Seattle and around the country. Now that Seattle has established a new standard, the pace of change is likely to accelerate quickly as activists and politicians elsewhere seek to capture the momentum. Five years from now, Americans may look back at this remarkable victory and wonder what all the fuss was about. Seattle now joins a growing list of cities -- including San Francisco, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Jose, and Washington, D.C. (along with two adjacent Maryland counties) -- that in the past few years have seized growing frustration over the widening income gap and declining living standards by establishing local minimum wages substantially above the federal level of $7.25. Unions, community groups, and progressive politicians in San Diego, New York City, Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities are already taking steps to follow in Seattle's footsteps. In 19 states, minimum wages are now over $7.25 an hour; 10 of those states automatically increase their minimum wages with inflation. The highest state-mandated wage law is in Washington State, where the minimum wage increased to $9.32 in January.

McDonald’s CEO: ‘We Will Support’ Minimum Wage Hike

June 5, 2014 Mark Gongloff, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! GEO, Inequality, McDonald's, Minimum Wage

McDonald's might finally have figured out that paying its low-wage workers more would actually be a good thing for McDonald's. McDonald's CEO Don Thompson recently suggested his company would support a bill, proposed by President Barack Obama, raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. Such a wage hike likely wouldn't satisfy his workers, some of whom recently stormed the company's Oak Brook, Ill., headquarters demanding $15 an hour. But it would be a noticeable shift in attitude for the world's biggest restaurant chain, which has so far been neutral as the debate about higher wages has roiled around it. "You know, our franchisees look at me when I say this and they start to worry: 'Don, don't you say it. Don't you say we support $10.10,'" Thompson said during a little-noticed talk at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management last month, according to a Chicago Tribune report. "I will tell you we will support legislation that moves forward." Thompson, who made $9.5 million last year, has been on the defensive about worker pay since at least last July, when the news media discovered McDonald's had a financial-advice website for its employees (no longer available) recommending they get second jobs and not turn on their heat.

Seattle $15 Minimum Wage Signed With Unpopular Loopholes

June 5, 2014 Paul Bigman, www.labornotes.org Educate! Elections, Minimum Wage, Seattle

It’s official: with a unanimous city council vote, Seattle yesterday adopted a roadmap to a $15 minimum wage. Like the making of sausage, the making of the final plan involved some unsavory additions. Still, it’s the nation’s largest step yet toward establishing an adequate wage floor for the working poor. The plan creates four groups of employers, two large and two small, each on its own phase-in schedule. The last of these groups to arrive at a $15 minimum wage—small employers whose workers receive tips or health benefits—will get there in 2021. The four categories will converge by 2025, when all Seattle workers will be guaranteed a minimum of $18.13 per hour. From then on, the minimum will increase 2.4 percent per year. Washington already has the nation’s highest minimum wage, $9.32, indexed to increase at the rate of inflation each year. But with the new increases, Seattle will pull far ahead of the rest of the state, with $18.13 by 2025 compared to an estimated $12.08 for the rest of Washington.

100 Arrested Near McD’s Headquarters Over Low Pay

May 22, 2014 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com Resist! Fast Food, Labor, Minimum Wage, Unions

McDonald’s closed part of its corporate headquarters on Wednesday in response to a mass protest by workers and activists that campaigners say ended in over 100 arrests. Over 2,000 people calling for a hike in the minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation descended on the fast food giant’s suburban Chicago headquarters in what is believed to be the largest demonstration McDonald’s has ever faced. Chanting, “Hey McDonald’s You Can’t Hide, We Can See Your Greedy Side,” and “No Big Macs, No Fries, Make our Wage Supersize,” protesters blocked the entrance to McDonald’s campus in Oakbrook, some 20 miles outside Chicago. A short walk from Hamburger University, McDonald’s training center, the protesters were confronted by a phalanx of police officers in riot gear. After they sat down the police issued two orders to disperse and arrests began. McDonald’s workers, church leaders and Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry were among those arrested.

Pressure Mounts On Johns Hopkins To Pay A Living Wage

May 22, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Resist! Inequality, Labor, Minimum Wage, Organizing, Strike

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: At the world-renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore the starting wage is $10.71 an hour, and 1,400 employees--including some 15-year veterans--are paid less than $10.91. That qualifies a family of four for food stamps.That's why on Saturday, May 10, ahead of the expected resumption of contract negotiations, thousands rallied to demand the hospital pay more. HOPKINS WORKER: There is no reason for us at all to be getting food stamps, to not be able to have enough to take care of our children. There's no excuse for that. DANNY GLOVER, FILMMAKER: This is a call to action. This is a call to action. We are telling the administration at Johns Hopkins University/Hospital, to get into that tent with that negotiating room, to talk with these workers, to be there and support these workers. To these workers it's about building a community, a better community. NOOR: Two thousand healthcare workers represented by 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East walked off the job for three days on April 9 to demand a $15 an hour base wage by 2015. Hopkins offered a five-year contract with a 2 percent raise. The Real News spoke to striking workers on the picket lines.

Fast-Food Worker Movement More Energized Than Ever

May 21, 2014 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org Resist! Fast Food, Labor, Minimum Wage, Organizing, Strike

“Walk out! We got your back! Walk out! We got your back!” shouted hundreds of fast-food workers and their supporters in a crammed McDonalds store. All eyes were on Marta, as she paced around behind the McDonalds counter trying to figure out if she could join her fellow workers on the other side. In unison, the workers continued to shout, “Walk out! We got your back!” News cameras flashed on Marta’s face, and organizers advised her over the counter about her rights. Marta walked over to consult her managers, sparking hope in the crowd that she just might do it. By this point, Maria, another McDonalds worker on duty, had already gathered her things in the back and walked directly out from behind the counter into a thundering crowd and several hugs, leaving the counter door behind her swinging enticingly. Marta continued to pace and talk to her managers, who shrugged at whatever she said. Then Marta disappeared. When she returned, her black purse was hanging on her shoulder and her sweater was draped over her arm. The crowd erupted —“¡Si se puede! ¡Si se puede!” (Yes, we can!) — as Marta pushed through the door without looking back. She clapped and danced as the crowd engulfed her with the chanting.

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