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The growing demand for a $15 per hour minimum wage has the potential to help rebuild the workers movement in the United States. Beyond the obvious purpose of raising income in our own home town, that is my main objective in working on the 15 Now Tacoma campaign. If we are going to counteract the political and economic power of Big Business, we workers seriously need our own political voice. It is the absence of such a movement that has enabled Big Business to claw back the hard-won gains achieved by workers movements during the 19th and 20th centuries. Those achievements included the eight-hour work-day, child labor laws, the original minimum wage - even the free public schools so many of us now take for granted. Here are some facts about the minimum wage.
That said, let me introduce myself. A shop steward with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21 and a member of the 15 Now Tacoma organizing committee, I have been a healthcare worker for 20 years. I have witnessed firsthand the brutal consequences of low wages and income inequality on people’s health - this in the wealthiest nation on the planet. That's why I am so committed to this struggle.
Even if we win a $15 minimum wage in Tacoma, we'll need a vibrant rank-and-file social movement like 15 Now to make sure it's enforced. The continuing struggle for a $15 minimum wage in the city of Sea-Tac is a case in point: $15 won at the ballot box but got mired in the courts. Some employers not only refuse to pay it, they're also firing workers who report their bosses' defiance of the law. True, there have been some public events organized around the enforcement of $15 and pushing for Sea-Tac Airport to be included in the law, and that is great. There is a also a class action law suit on behalf of Sea-Tac workers whose employers have not been paying them $15. But if there were a vibrant rank-and-file movement like 15 Now Sea-Tac to push for the enforcement of the minimum wage law, they could picket the businesses that refuse to pay their workers the now-mandatory $15 per hour. They could also hold regular public meetings about it, and do public outreach to workers to try to agitate and organize collective action. They could fight for other social justice demands too - affordable housing for example.
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