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.
From Alaska to New York City, millions will benefit from an increase minimum wage in 2019. Yet in Michigan and Washington DC legislators overturned referendum votes to raise wages, while the federal government still refuses to act.
Outside of traditional labor structures, a new labor activism is surging, often supported by traditional unions. This new activism ranges from the “Fight for $15” movement to the statewide teacher strikes that broke out last spring.
Bernie Sanders has an activist orientation. But without the looming threat of workers disrupting business as usual at Amazon, targeting Jeff Bezos wouldn’t have much teeth to it. With that connection he punches well above his weight.
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