This week, New Jersey became the fourth state to raise its minimum wage to $15. The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a big step in wage justice for hourly workers and its success is the result of smart campaigning by advocacy groups.
Sears’s bankruptcy earlier this month was hardly surprising. But Sears once was nearly as dominant in retailing as Amazon is now—although its success came from a very different model.
In San Francisco, where the cost of living is out of sight, there is an immediate need to address nonprofit and home health care worker salary levels—as the board of supervisors and mayor have just done. But, in the end, the city may prove too expensive to host the nonprofits it needs.
In New York City, restaurants are now required to pass voluntary donations from their workers to nonprofits that are supporting them. As cities seek to empower workers in a transformed economy, this new labor model is likely to spread.
As states and municipalities clash over the minimum wage, workers suffer and nonprofits remain largely silent.
A flurry of workers’ rights bills at the state level are considered even as a void opens up federally.
The “Fight for $15” continues with the introduction of a new bill in the U.S. Senate.
Those who work for nonprofits value their work beyond the paycheck. But building a network of critical services that takes advantage of this dedication to the extent of providing a subsidence-level standard of living is very troubling. Is this how we want to ensure the health and safety of the most vulnerable?
In an 11-to-3 vote, the Baltimore city council voted yesterday to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. While many supported the bill, the usual suspects decried the potential dire consequences from paying a living wage. Among them were nonprofits, and that is a real shame.
With a history of vigorously resisting wage increases for low-paid workers, and in the context of many reversible executive orders, fast food mogul Andy Pudzer is up for the job of labor secretary.
