Seattle approves $15 minimum wage

It's Just "Magic Money"

The Democrat run Seattle city council has unanimously voted to impose the highest minimum wage in the US at $15 an hour in a “historic victory” for the widening movement to lift low paid workers out of poverty.
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The incremental increase over several years will benefit about one quarter of Seattle’s workforce, particularly women and minorities, as it raises the lowest pay to more than double the federal minimum wage. The vote is expected to give momentum to campaigns across the US, from San Francisco and Chicago to New York state, to raise the incomes of minimum wage workers after Republicans in Congress blocked President Obama’s proposal for a national increase.

Socialist Kshama Sawant
Because Democrats are just too
damn Conservative.

But Seattle’s law will be closely watched for its economic impact and for threatened legal action by local franchises of fast food corporations, such as McDonald’s and Subway, some of the largest employers of low paid workers in the city, which are seeking to be classified as small businesses in order to win more years to implement the increases reports The Guardian.

Kshama Sawant, the only socialist city council member in the US, whose election campaign last year became a driving force behind the minimum wage legislation in Seattle, hailed the vote at a boisterous meeting before a packed council chamber as a “historic victory” for working people.

“A hundred thousand low-wage workers in Seattle will be seeing their wages raised to $15 an hour over the next 10 years. That would imply a transfer of roughly $3bn from the top to the lowest paid workers. Such a transfer has not happened in so many decades because mostly what’s happened is the flow of wealth has been from the bottom up. This is really raising the confidence of working people around the country,” she said.

Trade unions also backed the new law, including the local branch of the AFL-CIO.

"This ordinance not only will lift many, many workers out of poverty, it tells the business establishment in no uncertain terms that the game is changing, that working people are tired of watching the 1% get richer while the rest of us get poorer," it said.

Seattle will phase in the new minimum wage from 1 April 2015 over several years with large companies on a faster track than small businesses and non-profit groups. Big corporations, which employ about two thirds of Seattle workers presently earning less than $15 an hour, will be required to raise pay in increments over three years with further increases for inflation.