From raising the minimum wage to enacting police reforms, here are ballot initiatives progressives should watch in 2018.
Retail work does not have to pay poverty wages. New study compares work in Europe and the U.S. For all the power of market forces, from automation taking over routine tasks to globalization squeezing retailers’ margins, there is nothing inevitable about low-quality retail jobs. Social norms and political institutions can make them better, or worse.
The changes come at a time when there's growing concern for hourly workers. Thousands of workers have staged protests to call attention to their financial struggles and to fight for hourly pay of $15. The November election of a Republican-controlled Congress dampened hopes of an increase in the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. But advocates have continued to press for boosts on the state and local level.
The best way to reduce taxpayer burden in Illinois is to override Governor Rauner’s veto of the increase in the minimum wage to $15
It’s been almost a decade since the Great Recession, and America has witnessed a record 82 months of month-on-month jobs growth. The national unemployment rate now stands at a 4.3%, a 16-year low. But month after month, it is the low-wage sectors – fast food, retail, healthcare – that have added new jobs. Wage growth has barely kept pace with inflation. The national minimum wage ($7.25) was last raised in 2009.
July 31st is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, the day that marks how long into 2017 an African American woman would have to work in order to be paid the same wages as her white male counterpart was paid last year.
Ultimately, preemption of local minimum wage laws is a priority for big business. Advocates, workers, and legislators who support an economy that works for all should oppose the preemption of local minimum wage laws.
Why should 20 million Americans working at full-time jobs (sometimes two or three jobs) receive such pitiful incomes that they are forced to rely on food stamps while their CEOs grow ever wealthier?
After years of struggle, El Salvador workers have won a victory with a new minimum wage that has made an enormous impact in people's lives. Corporate power has not given up, preferring to pay starvation wages they are attempting to roll back the gains made.
“Taking away local control over wages (and a range of other
pro-worker, pro-environment, and pro-civil rights policies) has become
a major priority of ALEC, a corporate-backed group with extensive
lobbying resources and influence in our state legislatures,” according
to an National Employment Law Project statement. “ALEC drafts “model” minimum wage preemption
bills for conservative legislatures to simply copy and paste.”
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