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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 15, 2014)
...Up with the minimum wage: A Movement on the Rise (From Page 9)) can). It needs 218 signatures to force a vote, which would show the public where members of Congress stand. On April 30, 2014, supporters in the U.S. Senate tried to move forward with companion bill, S 2223. It got 54 votes — a majority, but not enough to break the Senate’s filibuster rule, which in practice requires 60 votes to move any bill to a final vote. [Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to vote in favor.] The Republican obstruction comes at a time of particularly strong public support for an increase: In a November 2013 Gallup poll, 76 percent of Ameri- cans favored raising the federal mini- mum wage to at least $9, and 69 per- cent favored indexing it to inflation. Even among Republicans, 58 percent favored the increase to $9. In separate polls of small business owners, 57 per- cent said they support increasing the federal minimum, and 47 percent fa- vored an increase to $9.50. In February 2013, President Barack Obama called for the minimum wage to increase to $9. By February 2014, that sounded too paltry, and he proposed $10.10, the figure in Rep. Miller’s bill. But minimum wage campaigners don’t see HR 1010 as likely to pass in the cur- rent Congress. With the bill blocked in both chambers, Obama acted on his own, issuing an executive order requir- ing certain federal contractors to pay $10.10 an hour starting January 2015. In 1968, when the federal minimum wage was at its buying-power peak, only one state — Alaska — had a higher minimum wage. By 1998, six states did. By 2008, 22 states were above the federal minimum. Today over half of Americans — 54 percent — live in the 22 states that have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. And 10 of those states, starting with Washington in 2001, increase the mini- mum annually based on inflation. [Ore- gon voters did that in 2002, passing Bal- lot Measure 25.] With minimum wage bills blocked in Washington, D.C., the battle has shifted from Congress to the states, and from the states to the cities. And per- haps nowhere has the battle raged more intensely than the Seattle area. around the nation SeaTac’s $15-an-hour ballot meas- ure didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was the final solution to a decade-long union fight that started when airlines, particu- larly Alaska Airlines, ended airport work as a source of middle class wages. Ramp workers, jet fuelers and cabin cleaners found their work outsourced to private contractors, accompanied by savage wage cuts. Unions tried repeat- edly to unionize the new employers, but faced insurmountable legal obstacles under the National Railway Labor Act. At length, a union coalition known as the SeaTac Good Jobs Committee appealed to the Port of Seattle, the elected body in charge of the airport, to use its power to set a decent minimum wage. Port commissioners shrugged their shoulders, saying they wished they could help, but that they lacked legal au- thority to do so. In 2009, the union coalition ran an independent campaign to elect a more sympathetic Port Com- mission, and won two of three targeted races despite major campaign spending $15: The shot heard (Turn to Page 25) Southwest Washington CENTRAL LABOR COUNCIL “A Voice for Working Families” For all your hard work and dedication, Happy Labor Day to All! President SHANNON A. WALKER • IAM/W 536 Vice President JUDY KUSCHEL • WFSE 313 Secretary/Treasurer ROY JENNINGS • ATU 757 Trustees MARK RAUCHENSTEIN • PTE 17 JOHN MURPHY • BCTGM 364 MATT DEVORE • OPEIU 11 Executive Board JENNY GRAY • BCTGM 114 SHANNON STULL • LIUNA 335 Sergeant-at-Arms ED FRAZIER • IAM 63 Meetings are held the first Wednesday every month starting at 6 p.m. at the LIUNA/Teamsters Hall, 2212 NE Andresen Rd. Vancouver, Washington. www.swwclc.org AUGUST 15, 2014 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS PAGE 17
