Tag Archives: fightforfifteen

Home, Labor Studies

Fight for $15 Picks Up Steam

It’s all happening. Last Wednesday, the New York state wage board appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo recommended a state-wide minimum wage of $15 for fast food workers in NYC and throughout the state. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted for a $15 minimum wage for those working in its unincorporated areas by 2020, which will complement the minimum wage hike for workers in the City passed in May.

Who else is making moves in the $15 direction? The UC system, Kansas City (well, $13), Washington, DC.

Justin Miller wrote up a nice roundup of these developments over at the American Prospect on Friday. As he writes, “All in all, it has been a highly successful week for minimum wage campaigns around the country.”

Indeed.

Photo by MTEA via flickr (CC-BY).

Home, Labor Studies

Los Angeles to Increase Minimum Wage to $15/hour

Following in the footsteps of Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, the Los Angeles City Council voted today to increase its minimum wage to $15/hour by 2020. The NYTimes is calling this “perhaps the most significant victory so far in the national push to raise the minimum wage.”

“The effects here will be the biggest by far,” said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was commissioned by city leaders here to conduct several studies on the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase. “The proposal will bring wages up in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s. There’s a sense spreading that this is the new norm, especially in areas that have high costs of housing.”

Tuesday’s vote could set off a wave of minimum wage increases across Southern California, and the groups pressing for the increases say the new pay scales would change the way of life for the region’s vast low-wage work force.

Read more at the New York Times.

 

Photo by Denis Bocquet via flickr (CC-BY).