By Charlie Brown
McDonald's is under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board...
huffingtonpost.com
Massachusetts Passes The Highest State Minimum Wage In The Country
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/19/3450807/massachusetts-minimum-wage-11/
http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-secretary-calls-for-raise-in-the-minimum-wage/
WASHINGTON - Saying the nation's families have changed but the nation's work-family policies haven't, Obama administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez is arguing for revisions in federal laws to make them more family-friendly.
And raising the minimum wage tops that list, he adds.
Would you give up all food for a week for a $15 wage?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/18/3450209/providence-hunger-strike-minimum-wage/
In Providence, Rhode Island, three hotel workers and a city councilwoman started a week-long hunger strike on Monday, protesting a state bill that would block their efforts to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The state Senate Finance Committee has passed a provision banning cities and towns from raising their minimum wages above the state level, which rose to $8 an hour at the beginning of the year and might be increased to $9. But $9 an hour is not high enough for Providence’s hotel workers, who had organized to get their city council to consider raising their wages to at least $15 an hour.
Santa Brito, a hotel housekeeper on hunger strike who spoke with ThinkProgress through an interpreter, said she’s making $10 an hour but still can’t get by. “I have to borrow money from my brothers and cousins just to pay off my bills and buy other things my son needs,” she said. “With the money I earn I can’t even pay off my mortgage.”
A $15 minimum wage, on the other hand, could make a big difference. It would allow Brito to pay her bills, buy necessities for her family, and even pay for her son to go to college.
For Ylenny Ferreras, also a hotel worker on hunger strike who has been organizing for the wage increase and spoke through an interpreter, that higher wage “would definitely change my life,” she said. “My kids can eat more. With that minimum wage I could buy a home for my children to have a better place to grow up.” But on her current $8 wage, it would be very difficult to buy her own home.
Mirjaam Parada, another hunger striker who is lucky enough to make $17 an hour at her hotel, made less in her last job when everyone’s pay was cut by 20 percent. “I know what it means to survive,” she said. Her rent is $800 a month, and that plus gas and food “is all the money” at a lower wage, she added.
A $15 wage would allow the hotel workers to “live with a little bit of respect and not have to be afraid for the next month about how to pay the bills,” Parada added.
The fight isn’t just about wage levels, however. The provision in the state budget blocking local minimum wage hikes has made them feel ignored and disenfranchised. “Politicians say you have the right to vote, it’s your responsibility to make sure your community is fine,” Parada said. But their voices aren’t being heard.
“We’ve been totally ignored by the statehouse,” Ferreras explained.
That lack of local control is what made City Councilwoman Shelby Maldonado join the hunger strike. “As an official, I feel like it’s a right being taken away,” she said. “City officials should be able to respond to the needs of their community, especially on the minimum wage.” She represents Central Falls, where she said “families are living paycheck to paycheck just trying to make ends meet. They’re asking for a fair minimum wage.”
Rhode Island is the latest place to see these sort of preemption measures that ban municipalities from raising their own wages. Oklahoma passed one in April and Kansas has a law that prevents local governments from requiring contractors to pay higher wages. A handful of mostly Republican states passed these kinds of laws about a decade ago, including Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, and Texas. But in Rhode Island, the state legislature is controlled by Democrats.
The hunger strike will take place outside of the Rhode Island statehouse and last for seven days. “If we need it to go longer, then we will,” Maldonado said.
“I want the governor to know we’re together and this is necessary, to have a $15 minimum wage,” Ferreras said. “That’s why I’m on this hunger strike.”
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/16/1307351/-In-San-Jose-a-minimum-wage-increase-and-falling-unemployment?detail=facebook
Thanks to Sam Stark on Tim Skubick: Minimum-wage hike may still make ballot
"Michigan Minimum wage ballot issue may not be dead yet" -Tim Skubick, veteran Lansing journalist
"Michigan Minimum wage ballot issue may not be dead yet" -Tim Skubick, veteran Lansing journalist
Popular wisdom is a beautiful thing. Without any facts to necessarily back it up, the chattering class in politics gets to make statements that become almost like facts if enough purveyors repeat it enough times.
For example, anybody who votes for a tax hike is toast. Or everybody knows the media has a liberal bias.
Conventional wisdom, which is a more souped up version of popular wisdom, is circulating in this town that the petition drive to boost the minimum wage is worthless because it seeks to amend a law that the legislature has already repealed.
Even if you put it on the ballot and the voters said yes, it would mean nothing.
The "wisdom", on the surface, appears to be hard to refute. Those seeking to hike the minimum wage to $10.20 an hour probably got enough names to place it on the November ballot, but those crafty politicians under the dome beat them to the punch. They passed their own wage hike and in so doing declared the current law, that the petition folks want to amend, null and void. So there's nothing to vote on.
End of story?
Maybe not. Turns out there apparently is a state supreme court ruling on an unrelated matter that may be applied to this issue. If so, the court might find that even though the petition organizers did not intend it, they actually have a proposal that re-instates the law that lawmakers thought they junked.
Wouldn't that be a fine how-do-you-do which would flip the popular wisdom on it's ear. However a prominent election barrister in town reports, "I've never heard of such a case."
If he is wrong, it's pretty clear the courts may have to sort all this out and if they rule in favor of placing it on the ballot, Republicans will be aghast. Part of the reason they upped the minimum wage was to avoid giving the Democrats a reason to show up at the polls to vote for it in November.
While it is mere speculation, if that happened it would be a double
kick in the teeth. Republicans get stuck with a higher Democratic voter turnout and in all likelihood the higher minimum wage would be increased thus making their law the one that is null and void.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/18/3450209/providence-hunger-strike-minimum-wage/
Massachusetts was the first state to pass minimum-wage law
http://www.peoplesworld.org/today-in-labor-history-mass-first-state-to-pass-minimum-wage/
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