VOTERS APPROVING $15 MINIMUM WAGE

“The [$15 minimum wage] issue has motivated thousands of protesters to join the Fight for $15’s periodic strikes: What started in one city ultimately swelled to protests in 150 American cities. By many measures, it has become the biggest labor protest in decades, with a wide spectrum of supporters, from college students and inner-city workers to janitors and nursing-home aides. The movement helped to get voters in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac to approve a $15 minimum wage, and not long after in Seattle itself and San Francisco, followed by Los Angeles and Pasadena.

“ ‘These victories made people believe this wasn’t some crazy demand,’ said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has spent millions of dollars underwriting the Fight for $15. ‘These incremental victories began to add up, and $15 moved from a demand to a standard. Now the fight is, how fast can you get it.’ She added that private employers, including Nationwide Insurance, Facebook and U.P.M.C., Pittsburgh’s largest hospital chain, have increasingly embraced a $15 minimum.”

Steven Greenhouse, “How the $15 Minimum Wage Went from Laughable to Viable,” The New York Times, April 1, 2016. Steven Greenhouse, a visiting researcher at the Russell Sage Foundation, is a former labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times and the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.