The Fight for Fifteen by David Rolf

The Fight for Fifteen by David Rolf

Author:David Rolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620971147
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2016-03-24T00:00:00+00:00


6

An American Wage for a Stronger America

The Case for $15

Will the uprisings of the national “Fight for 15” and the victories in SeaTac, Seattle, and elsewhere become the first victories ultimately leading to a stronger and more vibrant America? Or will they be viewed as brief blips on the radar screen during America’s descent into a Third-World economy of poverty and inequality?

To start to answer these questions, we need to have a clear sense of what it is we are fighting for, why we want it, and what it would mean for the greater good. It is increasingly clear that Americans understand that what is good for American workers is ultimately good for the country as a whole. The question is whether our leaders—elected leaders in public office and business leaders in the C-suites—are willing to listen to the patriots instead of the plutocrats and unite around a vision of robust and shared prosperity in America that will once again let all boats rise together.

This chapter shows how a $15 minimum wage will make our nation stronger.

A $15 minimum wage will increase pay for as many as half of all American workers; restore the lost earning power of millions of Americans; decrease poverty and income inequality in America; allow more Americans to pursue an education; increase the time that American families and communities can spend together; improve America’s collective physical and mental health; reduce America’s dependence on public assistance programs; grow America’s federal, state, and local tax revenues; and create demand in local economies that will help grow businesses and employment.

$15 WILL RAISE WAGES FOR HALF OF THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE

As we saw in chapters 1 and 2, a shockingly high percentage of American jobs are now low-wage jobs, and these jobs are no longer held primarily by teenagers. A $15 minimum wage would have a major impact on American workers: about 30 percent of all hourly workers are now making “near minimum-wage,” $10 and under.1 And a full 42 percent of all American workers make less than $15 an hour. Because the minimum wage sets pay scales in low-wage industries, a $15 minimum wage will transform jobs in restaurants, hotels, and warehouses from dead end to living wage.

Current proposals for increasing the federal minimum wage haven’t reached high enough to make this kind of difference in workers’ lives. We’ve seen proposals for $12 by early 2015 and $15 by mid-2015—but there has been significant political resistance in Congress even over proposals for $9 or $10.10 minimum wages. The New York Times correctly called out the idea of reaching $12 by 2020 as both “too low and too slow.”2 These low, slow, incremental proposals by Congress fail to directly affect a majority of American workers: a raise in the federal minimum wage to $9 would impact only a few million workers. A raise to $15 would impact tens of millions.

Some workers will benefit directly from raising the minimum wage to a living wage, while others will benefit indirectly through “spillover” wage



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