‘Fight for $15’ minimum wage powers on with coast state wins
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican Assemblymen Donald Wagner, left, Jim Patterson, center, and Devon Mathis, confer before the Assembly voted on a measure to gradually raise California’s minimum wage to a nation-leading $15 an hour by 2022, Thursday, March 31, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Wagner and Patterson both spoke in opposition to the bill, SB3, but it was eventually approved by both houses and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown.
NEW YORK >> California and New York — where almost 1 in 5 Americans live — are on their way to raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the activists who spearheaded those efforts are now setting their sights on other similarly liberal, Democratic-led states.
Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington are among the states with active “Fight for $15” efforts, and even economic experts who oppose the increased rate see it gaining momentum.
“There is lots of pressure to do this,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who is now president of the conservative American Action Forum, which says big minimum-wage increases cost jobs.
The idea faces headwinds in more conservative and rural states in the South and the Midwest. But activists believe the movement is picking up steam, even if their two big victories so far were achieved in two highly receptive places: trend-setting, liberal, labor-friendly states with a high cost of living and yawning gaps between rich and poor, especially in New York City and Silicon Valley.
“In the beginning, it looked impossible,” said Alvin Major, a fast-food worker and leader of the Fight for $15 campaign. But now, “what happened in New York, in California, it’s going to spread around the country.”
Since the $15-an-hour movement planted roots with a 2012 New York City fast food workers strike, it has gained ground amid the broader debate over income inequality. Cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco have recently agreed to go to $15 in the coming years, and Oregon’s minimum wage is headed to $14.75 in Portland.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with top news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been pushing for a $15-an-hour standard nationally, while President Barack Obama has called more generally for raising the minimum wage. The federal minimum is currently $7.25; 29 states and Washington, D.C., have set theirs higher.
Sanders’ primary opponent and a former New York senator, Hillary Clinton, has supported raising the federal minimum wage to $12. Her campaign website says she also believes “we should go further than the federal minimum through state and local efforts, and by workers organizing and bargaining for higher wages, such as the Fight for 15…”
New York and California are now on track to have the highest. California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, is set Monday to sign a measure boosting the current $10 rate to $15 by 2022.
In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have agreed on a more complex plan. The $9 minimum would gradually rise to $15 in New York City by the end of 2018 and then in some prosperous suburbs by the end of 2021, but only to $12.50 in 2020 in the rest of the state, with further increases to $15 tied to inflation and other economic indicators. The measure headed to Cuomo’s desk after passing the Legislature on Friday.
New York’s graduated approach stemmed from negotiations with Republicans who worried such a sharp increase would devastate businesses, particularly in the more fragile economy outside the New York metropolitan area.
Similar dynamics may play out in other parts of the country. While $15 may seem reasonable in high-paying areas, “it’s a much harder lift in low-wage areas,” said Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
Also, California and New York have politically influential unions, strong community organizing activity and Democratic politicians eager to translate the movement into legislation.
“That’s not going to happen in some states, particularly in the South and maybe some of the Midwest,” said Peter Dreier, a politics professor at Occidental College.
Idaho lawmakers, for example, recently passed a measure barring local governments from raising the statewide minimum of $7.25, and Republicans in Arizona are trying to do the same.
The income gap has been widening in every state for at least 30 years but is particularly pronounced in states with large financial or information technology industries, according to economists Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center and Estelle Sommeiller of the Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences in France.
The top 1 percent of New York taxpayers, for instance, earned 40 times the average income of the state’s remaining 99 percent in 2011, according to research from University of California at Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. Nationally, the top 1 percent made 24 times that of everyone else; in California, the top earned 26 times more.
Economists have long debated the impact of raising the minimum wage, and some recent research has found that modest increases seldom cost many jobs. But the jumps to $15 are larger than those economists have tested in the past, and there are fears of widespread job losses in some places.
In New York City, Joseph Sferrazza worries that paying $15 will cost him his bakery, La Bella Ferrera. The rate is nearly double what he now pays his employees, mostly students working part time.
“The rent is so high, the profit margin is already so low, I don’t see how we can make it work,” he said. “You can only charge so much for a cookie.”
But $15 an hour would be a 50 percent raise for Maria Velez, 29, who makes $10 an hour working at a children’s program and helps support her parents and grandparents.
“This city is crazy expensive and only getting worse,” she said. If the boost took effect immediately, “it would make my life and my family’s life better — but in five years? I can’t say.”
40 responses to “‘Fight for $15’ minimum wage powers on with coast state wins”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
It makes sense for the liberal and progressive states to attempt to get the rest of the country along with their job killing minimum wage hike, it would minimize the egress of business out of their states. Now, a business may vote with their feet and move out of the impacted states, that will be blighted with unemployment, especially of the low wage worker, all the while, prices will rise, making life even more miserable.
Employee wages and related costs are the biggest expense for any business. When utterly clueless bureaucrats in CA & NY kow towed to the activists they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. Seattle bureaucrats were shocked when they found out job numbers went down by around 700 where the $15 MW took effect.
Walmart, other companies may decide to start installing a new technology called “Invisible watermarking” which allows scanners to read bar codes from anywhere on a product’s packaging. No cashier, you push your cart through a scanner, kiosk shows the price you pay, you make payment, are done. Want your items bagged? Bags will be provided at cost, or bring your own. Your responsibility to do the bagging. Too expensive to hire people for this.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-could-eliminate-the-worst-part-of-shopping-2015-6
Hawaii, and especially Honolulu should raise the minimum wage to a living wage. The cost of living here is outrageous and only going higher. If the state legislature won’t raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, then the Honolulu City Council should raise the minimum wage to a living wage tied to the cost of living in Honolulu. This could help many people who are living in tents find a place they can afford to rent.
What’s a living wage? I would say at least $20 an hour right now, not gradually.
I’m a small business owner. I have 5 part time employees and pay above current wage. If the minimum wage went to $15 I would have to raise prices or close shop…
Want a living wage? Go to school and LEARN A SKILL! Earn that $15 like the rest of us.
CORRECT! Windward! Couldn’t have said it any better.It’s sad though to see the country’s citizens “Shirking” their responsibility and solely depending on a Socialist mindset. Yep it’s all about a “Handout”! Like the rest of us? get out there and crack your okulele’s too!Get a real JOB!
Windward Side is 100% correct! We all have to make ourselves valuable enough in the eyes of an employer to want to hire us. Learn a skill that is in demand and giveup your entitlement mindset!
Agreed with those above. Raising the minimum wage to $15 would kill the incentive to gain the skills to progress further. Good paying jobs are the rewards for hard work/study and dedication.
If you think about it cabot17, if you raise the minimum wage, and the supply of housing remains the same, what happens to the low wage worker’s bid for housing? Economics says the price will go up, and the homeless will be out bid yet again. Then the low wage worker will have a hard time finding a job, making homelessness an even larger, more entrenched problem. Unfortunately, for liberals, this is an emotional thing, that exacerbates the problem.
Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be a job that is a career. It is a job for the uneducated or students. People need to get an education or get a good practical education if they want a living wage. You can’t expect to have a living wage from a job that only takes a day or two to learn.
The minimum wage is an ENTRY level wage. It’s not meant to support a family!!Hence the word__Entry Level!!
Adverse effects will definitely play out!!The bigger companies will simply adapt,by cutting hours,benefits,hiring less,making their products more expensive,manufacturing overseas and so on. Some are even considering using automation….Robots!
It’s not the Big businesses i’m worried about,it’s the Small Businesses !!__Especially those with limited capitol!! Many of whom are just making ends meet!
Many small businesses will suffer and will have to take drastic measures and some will even go out of business!!
People need to understand that Businesses are the wealth and Job creators of this country.They are the wheels that turn the country & they? after all support the US government,because the government does not create wealth ! It only takes!
This is ploy folks!! I can read the Democrats agenda a mile away! VOTES!!
Most of these politicians have no idea how to run a business and the effects it will have. These are just “Feel Good” policies . Conspired to get more VOTERS…..from the “Under Privileged” majority.The Low income earners!IMUA
San Francisco already has an automated restaurant and Carl’s Jr is working on a similar concept. Only an utterly clueless bureaucrat thinks raising the pay for minimal skilled to no skilled employees is a good idea. Now watch the job numbers fall.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-the-machine-worker-is-here-2016-3
But you are blessed enough to have been educated and become articulate to write as well as you do here. There are many people, even locally born and raised, who aren’t nearly as adept as you are. They probably came from impoverished upbringings, and they didn’t have parents who thought it a priority to ensure they stay on the straight and narrow, focused on school, and taking full advantage of the free education that they had an opportunity for.
The cost of housing and college tuition has inflated at a rate beyond double the rate of wages. So maybe the minimum wage was a true entry level wage back in the day. It is perhaps worth a fourth, a fraction of what it was in your day. Minimum wage in Hawaii $3.85 per hour in 1988. Tuition at UH was $400 a semester. You could actually work a minimum wage job, live at home, and pay for college. Minimum wage today is $8.50 per hours, but tuition is now just about $5000 a semester in Hawaii. So wages rose 2.21 times in 28 years, whoopie–finger twirling in air while eyes rolling. Tuition is now 12.5 times higher. Housing is now about 10 times higher. So wages have grossly lagged inflation. So saying that someone should just stick it and suffer is wrong on all fronts. The bottom bracket is getting stiffed in a huge way.
Thank you! Finally someone making sense
if a business cannot pay $15.00 then it shouldn’t be in business.
Many cannot pay $15.00. I guess they will go out of business.
The most ridiculous statement I’ve ever read!
Spoken like someone who has never had to make payroll.
Why “only” $15? Seems like a arbitrary number. If $15 is good, why not $20? Heck why not $30?
raiderDogs – Spoken like a true graduate of the Nei’s failing educational system, an elected bureaucrat, anyone who hasn’t got a clue about economics, how to run a business. No clue about the crushing level of bureaucracy piled on a business owner by the city/state/feds.
A typical JARP. (Just Another Rookie Poster)
blah blah blah
If you can’t afford a $10 Big Mac …….
Seems like a modest increase considering folks are starting off in a wage hole from the minimum wage not increasing with living costs
There are 6 years until 2022 … 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
An increase from $10 to $15 is a 50% increase
Divided over 6 years, that results in about a 7% wage increase each year.
Ok I’ll take 7 percent a year considering my raises have been in the two percent range
Remember…you have to also increase the price of your product to compensate. If your customers don’t buy….bye bye.
Why do these fight for 15 people hate the poor and unskilled so much? After all they are the ones who are gonna be driven out of the job market as a result of these proposed policies.
We who studied, spent thousands of $$$ to learn a skill and worked countless hours to move up the ladder. We who EARNED where we are now simply cannot see why our cost of living will rise because these entry level positions are now meant to aupport a family.
It’s not that they hate the poor and unskilled A business can only afford to pay its employees a certain amount in order to cover all the other business expenses and still make a profit to remain in business. No one goes into business to lose money. No one talks about the person already making $15 an hour. Does that person’s pay increase the same amount as someone just starting to work with no experience?
Business owners pay themselves what they think their time and effort is worth, not what other people think they are worth. If it was the other way around, the CEO of many companies and non-profits would be taking a serious pay cut. Google any non-profit CEO and see what their salary/compensation is and tell me they deserve that amount for playing on your emotions to donate money to their cause. If they were really passionate about their cause, wouldn’t they be earning less so that more of the donations go towards their primary cause of finding a cure to cancer, birth defects or whatever cause their non-profit was created.
Well the people pushing for a $15/hr wage act as if they do hate the poor and unskilled because it’s those people who will get hurt the worse aka unemployment. Yes it should be left to the bizness to choose what to offer its employees just as its up to the individual worker to decide whether to accept a job or not.
Perfect. If you don’t want the job for the salary offered, don’t take it. Geez pretty simple.
Of course in Hawaii, $15-an-hour still isn’t enough to make a go of it. Still will need supplement income.
I am not particularly for a $15 minimum wage. However, if I were I wouldn’t be tackling the states. The proponents should know that this is an election year–go after the Congress and 1/3 of the Senate that’s up for grabs. Make them commit and then hold their feet to the fire!! Now, that makes sense, that’s what Trump would do–a practical approach!!
Until the state can pass a budget where they don’t spend more than they take in, leave the wage rate up to the business owners. Don’t dictate to business owners when you can’t even run your affairs any better. We have more and more people that want to live here so competition is fierce. Land is for sale to anyone regardless of country of citizenship or place of birth. It’s first come, first served. If you can’t afford to live in Hawaii then find someplace that is more affordable.
I would love to see a living wage adjustment to $15.00 USD per hour. Hawaii has a marginal tax rate down to $0, so everyone would put skin in the game here. It would be an interesting experiment here to see how many full time jobs would disappear as a result. Seattle has seen noticeable job position erosion within the city limits.
We’re still working an $10.
Great! All unskilled labor In HI leave for CA. Your other option is to learn a skill that is in demand. The rest of us did it!
All these news reports are so misleading. 15 dollars a hour in the year 2022 – give me a break.
Walmart workers, who do not make a living wage, receive more than $6B annually in taxpayer-funded public assistance. That is a direct transfer from the pockets of taxpayers to the wallets of the Walton family, which has a family wealth equal to combined wealth of 42% of American families. Keeping the minimum wage low is a scheme to provide a direct subsidy to Walmart. The $6B in government subsidy to underpaid Walmart workers equals 1/3 of Walmart’s worldwide profits. Roughly one-fifth of SNAP (food stamp) benefits are spent at Walmart stores, so not only do taxpayers subsidize Walmart by helping to pay their workers, but Walmart profits increase when those workers spent their government benefits at Walmart. In 2014, Federal subsidy to Hawaii’s Walmart workers earning less than a living wage came to $25M.
stop immigration from foreign and domestic, and maybe wages will rise… best argument for sovereignity