Minimum Wage

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.

Swiss To Vote On $25.26 Minimum Wage

May 18, 2014 Melissa Eddy, www.nytimes.com Organize! Democracy, Minimum Wage, Switzerland

While Switzerland’s booming economy has made the country synonymous with a superlative standard of living, the government estimates that approximately one worker in 10 struggles to pay rent, despite working full time. Just as the issue has been fiercely debated in the United States, the Swiss go to the polls on Sunday to weigh in on a proposed solution: raising the national hourly minimum wage to 22 Swiss francs ($24.65). If successful, it would become the world’s highest minimum wage; more than double the 8.50 euros ($11.64) agreed to last month in Germany, which has the European Union’s largest economy, or the $10.10 sought by President Obama. The referendum is the latest twist on the global debate over the causes and extent of income inequality, what if anything should be done about it, and whether higher minimum wages ultimately help or hurt workers.

Unionization Is Next Step For Fast Food Workers

May 17, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Organize! Fast Food, Minimum Wage

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: Fast food workers from all over the world are calling for a raise. All the way from Tokyo, Japan, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and even Stateside in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, they want a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to unionize without retaliation.This historic mass fast food workers protest took place in 150 cities and 33 countries. And Tanisha Green from Richmond, Virginia, is one fast food worker who protested for a wage increase. TANISHA GREEN, FAST FOOD WORKER, KFC: Right now, all of our fast food workers are still at $7.25 an hour, and we're trying to raise that. We want to be--we work hard, and we also would like to be compensated for as hard as we work. DESVARIEUX: Work that has seen much of a pay increase since the year 2000. According to a new Demos report, the average fast-food worker has seen her total pay increase by just 0.3 percent. And in 2013, she would be making less money, while CEO salaries have gone up. In 2012, the compensation of fast food CEOs was more than 1,200 times the earnings of the average fast food worker.

Fast-Food Workers Kick Off Global Labor Action

May 17, 2014 Lisa De Bode, www.america.aljazeera.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Minimum Wage, Strike

The world’s largest protest of fast-food workers kicked off Thursday with workers demonstrating in 150 cities in the United States and more than 30 other countries. The protesters are demanding better pay in a global rallying cry against rising income inequality, continuing on the heels of an 18-month-long labor campaign for higher fast-food wages in America. In the U.S., organizers said thousands who wanted their pay increased to $15 per hour participated in the labor action and were joined by other McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC workers in countries such as Brazil, New Zealand and Morocco, taking a stand for the first time, according to a statement from activist group Fast Food Forward, which is helping coordinate the protests. Kendall Fells, leader of Fast Food Forward, told Al Jazeera that the dozens of New York City workers who walked off their jobs in November 2012 have now launched a global movement to raise the wages of fast-food workers and continue the conversation on income inequality. “It’s a sign of the times, and people are struggling,” he said. "If we want to get the economy back on track, we need to get more money in the pockets of people. People around the country thought we were crazy to ask for $15, but now Seattle has [proposed] this."

How Fast Food Worker Strikes Ignited Across The Country

May 16, 2014 Alan Pyke and Adam Peck, www.thinkprogress.org Resist! Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

As fast food workers strike in 150 U.S. cities Thursday and solidarity protests spring up in 30 other countries, it’s worth a look back at how their cause grew from a handful of people to a globe-spanning movement. The fast food strikes began on November 29, 2012, with workers at a Manhattan McDonald’s. A few months later, a larger group of New York City fast food workerswalked out. Then low-wage workers in Chicago got in on the act two weeks later. Last May, the strikes jumped to Detroit, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Washington D.C., andSeattle. By late summer, that trickle had become a torrent, with strikes in about 60 cities in August that expanded the campaign to new regions of the country. Then in December, 100 cities saw fast food walk-outs and strikes by other low-wage workers.

San Francisco Rides The $15 Wave

May 15, 2014 Shamus Cooke, www.workerscompass.org Resist! Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

The San Francisco $15 proposal is stronger than the Seattle mayor’s version: the time line to get to $15 is shorter, and there are fewer exceptions. San Francisco companies with more than 100 employees would have until 2016 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but they must lift wages to $13 an hour by next January. Businesses with fewer than 100 employees have until 2017 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but must raise them to $13 an hour by 2015 and $14 by 2016. Polling has already indicated overwhelming support (59 percent) for the initiative. The process that San Francisco is using also has other advantages over Seattle’s. The unions and community groups are working as a united front in San Francisco, whereas in Seattle there was constant tension between the socialist city council member Kshama Sawant and her $15 Now group of supporters versus the unions: Sawant wanted a strong version of $15 and several of the unions just wanted a deal, seemingly more interested in working with the mayor towards “consensus” between the unions and the corporations.

Michigan GOP Rigging Law To Prevent Vote On Minimum Wage Increase

May 13, 2014 Brian Dickerson, www.freep.com Resist! Minimum Wage

State Sen. Randy Richardville figures he and his Republican legislative colleagues know what a minimum-wage worker is worth — and they’re not interested in voters’ two cents. So the senate majority leader is taking steps to ensure that Michigan’s minimum wage, currently set at a miserly $7.40 an hour, won’t be allowed to rise above $8.15 an hour, no matter how many voters think it should. A group known as Raise Michigan is gathering signatures for a November ballot proposal that would ask voters to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 by 2017 and index it to inflation thereafter. Restaurant owners and some other employers argue the increase is too steep. Another GOP lawmaker, Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, has introduced a bill that would, like Richardville’s proposal, authorize a faster but more modest hike to $8.15. I think a 75-cent hike does too little to make up the ground Michigan’s working poor have lost since the minimum wage was last increased in 2006. But Richardville and Jones certainly have every right to see whether they can take the steam out of Raise Michigan’s ballot drive by delivering a smaller increase before November.

Fast-Food Worker Strike About To Go Global

May 8, 2014 Bruce Horovitz, www.usatoday.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Minimum Wage, Strike

The fast-food worker movement for higher pay is about to go global. Workers from dozens of countries on six continents are joining the push for higher pay and worker rights, it was announced Wednesday at a press conference outside a McDonald's restaurant in Midtown Manhattan by Fast Food Forward, which represents U.S. fast-food workers. The group announced nationwide strike plans for May 15 -- a date which mirrors the $15 per hour pay they are demanding. On that same date, workers from dozens of countries on six continents will hold protests at McDonald's, Burger King and KFC outlets. It is not known how many workers will strike, but thousands of the nation's estimated 4 million fast-food workers are expected to take part in the one-day strike. "We've gone global," said Ashley Cathey, a McDonald's worker from Memphis, Tenn., who makes $7.75 an hour after six years on the job. "Our fight has inspired workers around the world to come together." For the fast-food industry, this seems to be the issue that just won't go away. It's expected to be front-and-center later this month when McDonald's hosts it annual shareholders meeting on May 22, in Oak Brook, Ill.

Animation Challenges Retail Industry

May 5, 2014 Joshua Graver and Maxwell Sorensen, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Creative Resistance, Minimum Wage, Organizing

Why can’t retail workers make ends meet? CUP worked with the Retail Action Project (RAP), and designers Joshua Graver and Maxwell Sorensen to make a short animation about the changing scheduling practices in the retail industry. Shifty Business helps retail workers understand that their experiences are not isolated events but a systemic approach to cost-cutting by their employers. It also helps policy makers see the effect these practices have on workers’ lives. Retail Action Project and its members are building a new movement in the retail industry to define the future of retail jobs. Workers across New York city are finding opportunities for education, networking, and career advancement through RAP membership. Their Just Hours campaign seeks to create fair and stable hours for retail workers. The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a nonprofit organization that uses design and art to improve civic engagement. CUP projects demystify the urban policy and planning issues that impact our communities, so that more individuals can better participate in shaping them.

Seattle’s $15 Wage Plan Proves Power Of Radical Pressure

May 4, 2014 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Organize! Minimum Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray,presented the city council this week with a proposal that calls for a phased-in minimum wage hike to $15 an hour over four years. Though the $15 minimum wage would make Seattle's one of the highest in the country, Kshama Sawant, the outspoken member of the Socialist Alternative party on the City Council and the de facto leader of the city's $15Now coalition, said she could not support Murray's plan as written because of its numerous complexities, loopholes, and a slow implementation. That a proposal to raise the wage this much is even supported by the mayor's office and business interests in the city, said Sawant, "is a testament to how working people can push back against the status quo of poverty, inequality, and injustice."

The People Are With Us

May 4, 2014 Josh Sager, www.theprogressivecynic.com Educate! Abortion Rights, Climate Change, Democracy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Immigration, Inequality, LGBTQ, Marijuana, Medicare, Minimum Wage, Single payer health care, Social Security, Taxes, Wars and Militarism, Women's Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

It is a persistent belief among many in the political and media establishments that the United States is a “center-right nation” which finds progressives to be far too liberal for mainstream positions of power. If you look purely at electoral outcomes, those who assert this appear to have a fairly strong point. The last several decades of federal politics have been dominated by center-right policies and truly left wing politicians have been largely marginalized (ex. Bernie Sanders). Even Clinton and Obama—the last two Democratic presidents who, theoretically, should be leftists—are corporate-friendly moderates who have triangulated during negotiations with Republicans to pass center-right policy compromises (ex. Obama’s Heritage Foundation inspired ACAor the Clinton Defense of Marriage Act compromise). While electoral results support the idea of a center-right USA, looking beyond electoral politics—which involve a mixture of policy choices, party politics, fundraising, and propaganda—and focusing purely upon raw policy preferences, leaves us with an entirely different picture -- the people are progressive and leaning left on almost all critical issues.

Why The Minimum Wage Vote Failed

May 1, 2014 Heather McGhee, www.demos.org Educate! Minimum Wage

Today, Senate Republicans filibustered a proposal to gradually raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. That filibuster may seem like a big surprise considering opinion polls—72 percent of the public are in favor of the proposal—but it makes a lot of sense when you consider who our elected officials hear from the most, and what that increasingly rarefied group thinks about policy. Our system is dramatically skewed toward big donors who feel differently about policy from the rest of Americans. One estimate showed members of Congress spend nearly half of their time in D.C. talking to these donors. The idea that minimum wage workers should be able to work their way out of poverty gets majority support across the board. Recent research draws on data from nearly two thousand policy initiatives to show that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy… while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

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