{"id":110761,"date":"2014-02-25T03:37:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T03:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workerscompass.org\/?p=10189"},"modified":"2014-02-25T03:37:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T03:37:58","slug":"the-murky-politics-of-the-15-minimum-wage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/the-murky-politics-of-the-15-minimum-wage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Murky Politics of the $15 Minimum Wage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seattle now resembles a mini-Venezuela. It\u2019s not a perfect comparison, but like the average Venezuelan the people of Seattle are experiencing an explosion of political consciousness.\u00a0Recently I took\u00a0the three-hour drive from Portland, and although Seattle is only a couple of hundred miles away, it\u2019s politically thousands of miles ahead of \u201cprogressive\u201d Portland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cfight for $15\u201d is the reason Seattle is in a political uproar.\u00a0Unlike any other American city, all the Seattle politicians<\/a> \u2013 including the Mayor and City Council \u2013 have publicly committed \u2013 and are working to implement \u2013 the $15 minimum wage, and Seattle workers now expect it. The coffee shop workers I talked to were eagerly looking forward to their big raises.<\/p>\n

How did this happen? Kshama Sawant is the answer. The new socialist city council member won her recent election by relentlessly campaigning on a $15 minimum wage.\u00a0Her campaign was devastatingly effective, using her Socialist Alternative<\/a> organization to mobilize hundreds of volunteers who’ve collectively tilted the politics of Seattle and beyond (the Washington governor recently came out \u2013 under heavy pressure \u2013 in favor of a statewide wage of $13 an hour). No Seattle politician dares to come out against $15 publicly, the public debate has already been decided; a recent poll showed that 68 percent of Seattle residents now support $15 without exceptions.<\/p>\n

And although Sawant has been assured by the Seattle mayor that $15 is a done deal, she\u2019s warning the Seattle public otherwise. Sawant recently spoke at a conference organized by the coalition \u201c$15 Now<\/a>,\u201d and blasted the intrigue of the mayor\u2019s committee set up to implement the new wage. Sawant knows the inner workings of the committee because she\u2019s on it.<\/p>\n

Sawant\u2019s\u00a0speech warned Seattle that the Seattle 1% are plotting a counter-offensive, aimed at undermining $15 by adding a variety of exceptions, loopholes, and extending the implementation time. In response Sawant demanded \u201c$15 now, no exceptions.\u201d\u00a0The \u201c$15 Now\u201d coalition is staying on the offensive, going into the neighborhoods to ensure that $15 is implemented \u2013 they’ve given the Mayor\u2019s committee a deadline and are preparing to organize a ballot initiative if necessary.<\/p>\n

The demand of a $15 minimum wage has crept into the national consciousness, beginning as a national campaign by SEIU to organize fast food workers under the demand of \u201c$15 and a union.\u201d\u00a0And although SEIU has since pulled back from the $15 demand, Sawant and others are seizing the moment, having realized the inherently powerful potential of $15, which has become an inspirational rallying cry that the U.S. working class hasn\u2019t experienced in decades.<\/p>\n

Now another mayoral candidate, Dan Siegel<\/a> in Oakland, CA, has wisely jumped on the $15 bandwagon.\u00a0And just as his campaign was gaining steam, a coalition of labor and community groups<\/a> sucked the air out his demand for $15:\u00a0\u201cLift Up Oakland\u201d recently came out in favor of a $12.25 minimum wage (?!).<\/p>\n

Instead of using the Siegel mayoral campaign to boost the local labor movement, some unions chose to make concessions before they even got to the bargaining table; they didn’t wait for the 1% to try to water down $15, they took the initiative themselves.\u00a0Either \u201cLift Up Oakland\u201d doesn’t believe $15 is achievable \u2013 in which case they should visit Seattle \u2013 or there is another, even worse logic at play.<\/p>\n

One key reason labor unions haven\u2019t been able to inspire their members \u2013let alone the broader working class \u2013 is their insistence on making demands that are acceptable to the Democratic Party.\u00a0This pragmatic approach to politics has been suicidal for the labor movement, and forgets a fundamental law of working class politics: the vast majority of working people only became active in politics when they are inspired \u2013 $15 inspires, $12.25 now falls flat.<\/p>\n

Even flatter was Obama\u2019s flaccid attempt to head off the gaining momentum of $15 an hour on the national stage, when he took the \u201cradical\u201d action of issuing an Executive Order that decreed federal contract workers will get paid $10.10 an hour \u2013 on new contracts issued in the future.<\/p>\n

The Democrats are now opportunistically preparing for mid-term elections by morphing into the party that wants to raise the minimum wage to $10.10.\u00a0But they have zero intention of actually implementing it. Once these Democrats get elected they\u2019ll simply blame the Republicans for blocking the effort, and since $10.10 is so bland, nobody will mobilize in D.C. to pressure Congress to act (nor will the Democrats ask people to mobilize). The whole sleazy ordeal will eventually fade from memory, like the pile of other promises Obama and the Democrats have spewed during campaign season and that were left to rot afterwards.<\/p>\n

With inequality already beyond comprehension and the labor movement suffering defeat after defeat, you\u2019d imagine that unions would accept $15 as a gift-wrapped campaign sent from the heavens. Instead they\u2019re hiding from this revelation, seemingly terrified.<\/p>\n

If all workers made $15, the leverage of unions at the bargaining table would increase exponentially. If unions organized campaigns nationwide for $15 they\u2019d win the support and admiration of the broader working class, who would then join unions by the hundreds of thousands \u2013 a labor movement on life support would receive a massive injection of oxygen.<\/p>\n

Seattle has proved this demand is not only possible, but is a key demand to re-spark the labor movement. If labor and community groups around the country united behind implementing this demand across the country, city by city, the workers\u2019 movement would be revitalized, as it is in Seattle.\u00a0As the debate over the minimum wage continues, watch closely to see who will stand behind $15 and who will stand in its way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seattle now resembles a mini-Venezuela. It’s not a perfect comparison, but like the average Venezuelan the people of Seattle are experiencing an explosion of political consciousness. Recently I took the three-hour drive from Portland, and although Seattle is only a couple of hundred miles away, it’s politically thousands of miles ahead of “progressive” Portland.  The “fight for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-110761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}