OT: Seattle approves highest US minimum wage, $15/hour
Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
The Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously approved a $15 hourly minimum wage - the highest in the nation.
The ordinance, which phases in the increase over time, passed a committee last week with a few changes. It would take effect next April and allow a sub-minimum wage for teens.
The ordinance was drafted by an advisory group of labor, business and nonprofit representatives convened by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. It would phase in wage increases over three to seven years, depending on the size of the business and employee benefits.
The City Council voted 9-0 in front of a sometimes raucous audience that frequently interjected cheers, applause and shouts of "Shame on you!" as the council debated several changes to the measure.
Read MoreSeattle City Council panel OKs $15 minimum wage
Seattle's higher minimum wage would surpass San Francisco's minimum of $10.74 an hour.
Washington state also has the highest state minimum wage, at $9.32 an hour.
Some small business owners worry that a higher minimum wage could put them out of business.
Meanwhile, a group called 15 Now led by Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would create an immediate wage hike for large businesses and a three-year phase-in for small business.
"Our victory is not complete, but we have fought until the last day, the last hour, against all the loopholes demanded by business," Sawant said before the council vote. "$15 in Seattle is just the beginning."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101714388
The ordinance, which phases in the increase over time, passed a committee last week with a few changes. It would take effect next April and allow a sub-minimum wage for teens.
The ordinance was drafted by an advisory group of labor, business and nonprofit representatives convened by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. It would phase in wage increases over three to seven years, depending on the size of the business and employee benefits.
The City Council voted 9-0 in front of a sometimes raucous audience that frequently interjected cheers, applause and shouts of "Shame on you!" as the council debated several changes to the measure.
Read MoreSeattle City Council panel OKs $15 minimum wage
Seattle's higher minimum wage would surpass San Francisco's minimum of $10.74 an hour.
Washington state also has the highest state minimum wage, at $9.32 an hour.
Some small business owners worry that a higher minimum wage could put them out of business.
Meanwhile, a group called 15 Now led by Socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would create an immediate wage hike for large businesses and a three-year phase-in for small business.
"Our victory is not complete, but we have fought until the last day, the last hour, against all the loopholes demanded by business," Sawant said before the council vote. "$15 in Seattle is just the beginning."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101714388
24 comments
Even now you keep hearing corporate America saying they can't find skilled workers at the wages they want to keep paying everyone. I face the same issue, I keep facing a shortage of skilled dancers willing to dance at $5 a lap dance. If I was corporate America, I would be saying there is a shortage of thousands of skilled dancers.
Fast food may copy corporate America. Pay everyone a salary and then tell them they have to work overtime for no extra pay.
We're a fairly wealthy city. I'm sure we'll survive through it. Costs will be passed onto consumers who can afford it.
And it will be funny to see how the ultra right reacts when things go on pretty much as before.
How many of you, my fellow tusclers, are at that income level, or lower?
Only 3.5 million workers are not paid significantly (at least 30%) more than the minimum wage. Over two thirds (71%) of these minimum wage workers are under 25 (mostly under 18) leaving only about One Million adult minimum wage workers. Most of this 1 Million are 2nd or 3rd income workers in households with over $50,000 in income. Supposedly "self supporting adults" earning Minimum wage total 300,000 or fewer workers - a tenth of 1% of the population.
The real question is why the extreme left wants to push this "wage inequality" lie so hard? I don't have any answers.
In Seattle, the cost of living is so high that $15 an hour isn't really a living wage - if the worker is the only breadwinner for a family - but it does create a create an inflationary issue for businesses in town. Will Seattle's fast food shops disappear or will hamburgers cost $10? Will the hundred or so Seattle adult "happy workers" joyfully join the teenagers who got a windfall raise and share their 6 PM soundbites on the network news?
Distraction? Distortion? Feel-good fallacy? I don't get it!
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitic…
Maybe if the prophets of hyper-inflationary doom are right it will not make much of a difference by then?
You have called people "fagz" before, and it's impossible that anyone who calls someone else a "fag" could make that much. Why? Because then they would make over 8 times my janitor's salary which would be unfair.
I'll hurdle my bile and false accusations at all kinds of people, especially when I'm jealous, but I don't call them "fags" so I deserve to make more than them. That's how the world ought to work.
So I'll believe that they are lying rather than think about the injustice of it all and get even more depressed than I already am.
Maybe if I gone into something different than art history... Fuckin' fuck everything!
She comes to the US to escape the extreme poverty in India and her husband earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salary and stock options from his engineering job Microsoft yet she wants to bite the hand that feeds her.
I think that examples rebound in recent history of corps controlling their costs by escaping cities - even countries. Cars and retail goods are pretty much gone compared to the good ole days of the 60's. These days they are hauling in guest workers for computers (I dare you to find someplace large with an all American corp of IT workers.) And they are hard at it expanding the labor pool trying to make 30,000,000 illegal aliens into citizens (just think what that will make the unemployment rate look like!)
"In 1960, Detroit had the highest per capita income in the United States; today, it is the poorest large city in the United States, with a poverty rate more than 20 percent higher than that of Cleveland, the third-poorest city, and half again as much as that of Philadelphia, the tenth-poorest city." -- http://www.nationalreview.com/article/35…