"It's really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I've worked for McDonald's for ten years?" (Nancy Salgado addressing McDonald's USA President Jeff Stratton's speech at the Union League Club of Chicago.)
In signing a bill that will raise California's minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016, Gov. Jerry brown said it was his “moral responsibility” to give Californians a chance to earn a living wage.
A hard look at the campaign by retail and fast-food workers to earn a living wage.
Since they were exempted from the FLSA nearly four decades ago, home care workers seldom have been paid overtime and their net income is often less than the minimum wage, considering time spent in travel between the homes where they work in a single day and its cost. Unlike workers covered by federal labor laws, they have not been paid for all the hours they are on the clock.
In 15 cities today, Walmart workers and their supporters are staging their biggest day of action since the groundbreaking "Black Friday" strike in November. They are demanding that Walmart reinstate 20 workers they say were fired for taking part in a June strike, and they are calling on Walmart to end its poverty-level wage scale and pay a living wage. (Mike Hall, AFL-CIO Now)
Since the first such strike in New York City last year, the expansion of low-wage jobs and the accompanying decline of well-paying union jobs have become a big topic in the media and on the street. The strikes have legitimated walking off the job as a tactic for workers, even those without a union. In addition, some fast food and retail workers have won tangible gains as a result of their strikes.
The problem over the last thirty or forty years is the declining bargaining power for workers. And the question is, how do we reconstruct bargaining power for workers?" That's what organizers of today's strike are out to do. Workers say they've already achieved some incremental store-specific victories - it's too soon to say if they'll succeed. But they're already drawing near-unparalleled attention from local and national media, and the rest of the labor movement.
Quote of the Day - Michelle Alexander: Dr. King was speaking out against the Vietnam War, condemning America's militarism and imperialism;
Reader's Comments: March on Washington; Black Unionists; Full Employment; Bradley Manning; Syria; Wal-Mart Workers Winning; U.S.'s 1 Percent So Much Richer; Visualization of Every Protest Since 1979;
Announcement - Memorial for Margrit Pittman - New York - Oct. 6
For 10 years a massive income gap has been widening across Silicon Valley. Last November, however, the residents of San Jose voted in favor of a small but significant change: Raising the city’s minimum wage from $8 to $10 per hour. In Forefront this week, journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz explores the people and policies shaping the economic future of a San Jose that many cities in the Bay Area could look to as a model for economic justice.
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