A bill - BA 257 - aimed to create a fast food sector council to set minimum industry standards on wages, working hours, health and safety and other working conditions - is expected to come before the senate appropriations committee on August 11.
California was the first state to implement a $15 minimum wage, and is now at the forefront of raising the wage floor, fast becoming the Fight for $20 and a Union. Can the minimum wage issue impact the mid-term elections?
Something remarkable is happening in fast food establishments, retail stores, and restaurants across America. You may have seen photos of it go viral. You may have even experienced it and the hostess apologizes for extra-long wait times.
One Fair Wage is fighting for tipped restaurant workers; it is fighting for Uber and Lyft drivers, car wash workers, nail salon techs, youth, the incarcerated, workers with disabilities.
The wild variety of grassroots organizers hoping to give the nudge to the senator all agree on one thing: The old ways won’t work.
The Vermont senator noted that "47% of workers in Georgia make less than $15 an hour and 71% of voters in Georgia support increasing the federal minimum wage."
Four recent studies suggest that higher minimum wage laws might save lives. The newest paper estimated that a $1 increase in the minimum wage led to a 3.4 to 5.9 percent decline in suicides among adults with a high school education or less.
Hector believed that the spirit of a union lives not just inside the halls of a union and in winning contracts. That promise is realized when the people in the communities where the workers live can live with dignity, can thrive, and can be happy.
Food prep workers want the same benefits other unionized airline workers get, plus a minimum wage of $15 an hour and the right to organize without employer intimidation, interference and lawbreaking.
The Fight for $15 was never just about raising wages, it was also about building public anger at a system where corporations make billions while workers are paid poverty wages. It is a return to labor's roots, the refusal to accept exploitation.
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