Minimum Wage

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."

Weak Minimum Wage Bill Defeated In US Senate

May 1, 2014 Alan Fram, www.bigstory.ap.org Resist! Congress, Minimum Wage

Senate Republicans derailed a Democratic drive Wednesday to raise the federal minimum wage, blocking a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's economic plans and ensuring the issue will be a major feature of this fall's congressional elections. Facing the threat of a GOP Senate takeover, Democrats have forced votes on a procession of bills designed to amplify their message of economic fairness. Republican senators accused Democrats of playing politics by pushing a minimum wage measure designed to lure voters but too expensive for employers and sure to result in lost jobs and higher inflation. "This is about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hard-hearted, and to try to rescue this midterm election," said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas. The legislation by Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa would increase the $7.25 hourly minimum wage for American workers in three steps until it reached $10.10 after 30 months, with annual increases for inflation afterward. The minimum has been at $7.25 since 2009, with 3.3 million Americans — including disproportionate numbers of women and younger people — earning that figure or less last year.

Progressive Restaurant Owners Stand With Workers To Fight For Better Wages

May 1, 2014 Mara Kardas-Nelson, www.alternet.org Educate! Minimum Wage

Of the five of them, only one wears a tie. Another wears a T-shirt. All are under the age of 40; only one is white. All are former restaurant workers, and two are now restaurant owners. Only one lives in DC, the other four making their homes in either Chicago or Philadelphia. This is not the contingent you expect to see lobbying in the halls of Congress. And that's exactly the point. Members of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, which represents 13,000 restaurant workers and thousands of consumers uniting to improve restaurant wages and working conditions, and Restaurants Advancing Industry Standards in Employment (RAISE), a ROC initiative made up of 100 restaurant owners supportive of ROC's efforts, are in Washington, D.C., this week to push back against efforts of the National Restaurant Association (NRA), a multi-million-dollar outfit that represents some of the biggest names in corporate food. The "other NRA" counts among its members corporations like Starbucks, Darden Restaurants (which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Capitol Grille, among others), and Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC). It wields huge influence in American politics and policy, historically pushing back on efforts to raise the minimum wage, close the pay gap between men and women, and require nutritional labeling on foods.

Low-Wage Workers Shame Greedy Restaurant Chains in Massive Protest

April 30, 2014 Mara Kardas-Nelson, www.alternet.org Resist! Corporatism, Minimum Wage, Organizing, Protest

Hundreds of low-income workers from around the country demanding better wages, benefits and an end to corporate greed blocked traffic in Washington on Monday morning to start of a day of protests, marches and lobbying Congress for economic justice. The protesters marched along main thoroughfare Pennsylvania Avenue as they headed towards the Capitol, blocking traffic for several minutes at a time at busy locations along the Mall. The activists were in Washington, D.C., for the Rising Voices for A New Economy conference, organized by National People’s Action and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Their coalition included groups like Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), which is using the day to launch a new shaming campaign against the corporate restaurant industry and its national lobbying group, The National Restaurant Association. NRA members are also in Washington for their annual convention and congressional lobbying day. “It’s a shame that people get paid $2.13 an hour—that’s 213 pennies more than a slave was making an hour, and I come from a slave state,” said Darrin Browder,

40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

April 29, 2014 Michael Snyder, www.soundmoneyinstitute.org Educate! Inequality, Minimum Wage

Are American workers paid enough? That is a topic that is endlessly debated all across this great land of ours. Unfortunately, what pretty much everyone can agree on is that American workers are not making as much as they used to after you account for inflation. Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour. That sounds very small, but after you account for inflation a very different picture emerges. Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today. And of course the official government inflation numbers have been heavily manipulated to make inflation look much lower than it actually is, so the number for today should actually be substantially higher than $10.74, but for purposes of this article we will use $10.74. If you were to work a full-time job at $10.74 an hour for a full year (with two weeks off for vacation), you would make about $21,480 for the year. That isn’t a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968. That is how far we have fallen.

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