$15 and Change: How Seattle Led the Country’s Wage Revolution

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/15-and-change-how-seattle-led-country-s-wage-revolution-1409316498

By October, the three-pronged $15 movement—the fast-food strikes, the SeaTac $15 initiative, and the insurgent Sawant campaign—was dominating local political headlines. Eager to win both street cred and labor endorsements, both candidates in Seattle’s hotly contested mayoral race suddenly jumped on board, promising a $15 minimum-wage ordinance if elected. Several council members followed suit.

In the end, Sawant won a stunning 50.7 percent of the vote against a widely endorsed, scandal-free Democratic incumbent. In nearby SeaTac, the $15 initiative held on for a narrow victory despite an expensive media campaign launched by Alaska Airlines and the hospitality industry.

SEIU, Sawant, and their supporters had turned the November election into a referendum on the $15 minimum wage, and the message from voters was clear. By the end of December, eight of nine Seattle City Council members had publicly endorsed a $15 minimum wage.

<snip>

There are lessons to learn from Seattle: Elections matter. Grassroots activism matters. Individuals like Durocher matter. But the most important lesson in this era of partisan gridlock is that sometimes the most direct path toward achieving a national progressive agenda is to pursue one locally. Had fast-food workers in New York City never walked out on strike, Seattle fast-food workers might never have won a $15 minimum wage. And Seattle’s $15 victory provides both the example and the momentum necessary for workers in New York and other cities to win the same. It is a strategy of distributed politics befitting the Internet age.Meanwhile, SEIU and other labor unions are using the organizations they already have to apply more traditional forms of political pressure, filing local ballot measures where politicians are moving too slowly and threatening to support pro-minimum-wage challengers to politicians who fail to move at all.

[3rdwaydem]

1. What a great city!

[eridani]

2. Fight not over. Defend $15 Now 11/14 at the Seattle City Council

Friday, 11/14, 8:00am- City Council to Vote on Budget Amendments. Come speak on behalf of city workers!

Mayor Murray's first order of business after taking office last year was a promise to raise the minimum wage for city workers up to $15/hr.

But when the mayor released his budget proposal to the City Council last month, we received a nasty shock- there was no provision in the budget to raise the wages of all city workers to $15/hr!

15 Now believes this is a gross betrayal of city employees- especially in light of the proposed raises for high-paid executives. Come to the City Council meeting this Friday, 11/14 at 8am to sign up to speak to the council and tell them to add funding for a $15/hr minimum wage for city employees to the budget. City workers should not have to live on poverty wages!

In Solidarity,
The 15 Now Team

[eridani]

3. The Fight Over Seattle's $15 Minimum Wage

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/29089-the-fight-over-seattles-15-minimum-wage

Seattle’s minimum-wage law, which is scheduled to take effect on April 1, requires employers to raise wages at different rates depending on how many workers they employ nationwide. A business with 500 or fewer employees in the U.S. must pay its workers at least $10 per hour starting on April 1, and $15 per hour by the first day of 2021. Businesses with more than 500 employees must pay at least $11 starting on April 1, and are required to raise their wages to $15 an hour by 2019, two years ahead of schedule.

The IFA isn’t trying to block the entire law. It simply rejects the way its members are affected by the distinction drawn between small and large businesses. Seattle counts franchisees among the businesses that will have to raise wages at a faster rate.

In other words, the city is placing franchisees in a separate category from other small businesses due to their licensing agreements with large conglomerates such as McDonald’s Corporation, the world’s largest fast-food chain.

The IFA argues that this violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution because Seattle is attempting to regulate an interstate relationship between a franchisee and the licensing franchisor. Additionally, IFA lawyers charge that the law breaches the First and Fourteenth Amendments by discriminating against franchisees.

[Alkene]

4. Judge Denies Franchise Association's Request;

Fast Food Workers Will Get a Raise April 1

by Heidi Groover • Mar 17, 2015 at 7:58 pm

A federal judge has ruled that the city does not have to hold off on increasing the minimum wage for fast food and other franchise employees while it fights a court battle over whether franchises should be treated as large or small employers.
The International Franchise Association is suing the city over its minimum wage increase, arguing it unfairly discriminates against franchises by treating them as large businesses and requiring them to increase wages at a faster rate than small independent businesses.

This decision doesn’t settle that argument. (The IFA and city will be back in court later this year.) In this more limited request, IFA lawyers argued the judge should halt the minimum wage rollout—which will start April 1—for franchises while the case is being argued because raising wages to $11 an hour could cause franchises to lose business or close.

But the judge found the IFA hadn't done enough to actually prove that harm would occur.

Plus, Jones writes, that possible harm to franchises "does not outweigh the concrete harm that will be suffered by employees who are entitled to a schedule 1 increase in their wages under the ordinance."

http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/03/17/21918958/judge-denies-franchise-associations-request-fast-food-workers-will-get-a-raise-april-1

[eridani]

5. Excellent--you beat me to it! Great news! n/t

[eridani]

6. Why Conservatives Who Say $15 Minimum Wage Kills Businesses Are Wrong

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/29222-why-conservatives-who-say-15-minimum-wage-kills-businesses-are-wrong

The New York Post editorial board, American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry, Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, and Rush Limbaugh all cited a Seattle Magazine article from March 4 that claimed a “rash of shutterings” was afoot in the Seattle restaurant world. The magazine suggested that the minimum wage law might be a contributing factor in the closures of the Boat Street Cafe, Little Uncle, Grub, and Shanik.

“That’s weird,” Boat Street Cafe owner Renee Erickson told the Seattle Times when fact-checkers emailed to confirm the Seattle Magazine story. “No, that’s not why I’m closing Boat Street.” Erickson’s three other restaurants remain open, and two brand new ones are in the works in Seattle. “Opening more businesses would not be smart if I felt it was going to hinder my success,” said Erickson, who described herself as “totally on board with the $15 min.”

Poncharee Koungpunchart and Wiley Frank of Little Uncle “were never interviewed for these articles,” they told the paper. They are closing one of their two locations, “but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.” Frank reportedly asked one conservative writer who had picked up the wage-menace red herring to “not make assumptions about our business to promote your political values.”

The owner of Shanik told the Times that closing has “nothing to do with wages,” and Grub’s owner explained that they’re being bought out and rebranded by new ownership because the breakfast and sandwich bistro has been “a huge success.”

The Seattle Magazine article itself notes that new restaurants are opening at a healthy clip around the city, and that the Capitol Hill neighborhood is in the middle of “an unprecedented dining boom.” And while numbers compiled by data wonk Evan Soltas offer only an imprecise snapshot of restaurant employment in the Seattle area, the empirical evidence shows “no sign of a minimum-wage hit to employment.” These details did not make it into the punditry that initially swirled around the article’s suggestion that some closures might relate to the wage law. Forbes’ Worstall published a follow-up piece insisting that his point stands despite the crumbling narrative of specific Seattle restaurant closures. AEI’s Price has not yet responded to an request for comment.