...Up with the minimum wage
(From Page 17)
by Alaska Airlines. But it wasn’t
enough: most of the Port commission-
ers continued to use their claimed lack
of authority as an excuse.
So Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) Local 775NW, backed
by coalition of labor, faith and commu-
nity groups, gathered 1,541 signatures,
and took the proposal directly to the
voters of SeaTac. It wasn’t the first
union-backed appeal to voters to inter-
vene in a one-sided wage negotiation:
Voters in Emeryville, Calif., passed a
$9 minimum for hotel workers in 2005,
and Long Beach, Calif., voters ap-
proved $13 an hour for hotel workers
in 2012. But SeaTac’s was the most au-
dacious ask ever: $15 for hotel and
parking lot workers, plus paid sick
leave, the right of part-time workers to
take full-time openings, and job secu-
rity when a service contract changes
hands. The $15 figure came from the
rallying cry of fast food workers who
had taken part in a wave of one-day
strikes around the country. That move-
ment, also with heavy behind-the-
scenes backing from SEIU, spread to
Seattle on May 29, 2013. On Nov. 5,
2013, the SeaTac measure passed, by
77 votes.
By then, the power of its idea had al-
ready jumped 15 miles north to Seattle,
a city with a population of 650,000. In
a city-wide City Council race, a social-
ist candidate, Kshama Sawant, made it
the centerpiece of her campaign, chal-
lenging entrenched incumbent Richard
Conlin. With Sawant beating the drums
for $15, the issue spread to the highly
competitive mayor’s race. Vying for
union endorsements, both mayoral can-
didates vowed to support $15 an hour.
Exactly one month after Ed Murray
won the race for mayor, minimum
wage campaigners sought to hold him
to his campaign pledge, with a day-
long march from SeaTac to Seattle City
Hall. Soon after, Murray made good on
his promise, convening a work group
with representatives of labor and busi-
ness to work out details. The result,
passed by unanimous vote June 2,
raises Seattle’s minimum wage to $15
an hour.
The Seattle ordinance is no model
of simplicity or speed: Businesses with
more than 500 workers nationally
reach $15 in three years, four if they
provide health insurance. Smaller em-
ployers reach $15 in seven years. Tips
count toward the minimum, but only
temporarily. All employers would pay
$15 by 2025.
“15, three to nine years from now”
is a long way from the rallying cry “15
Now.” But those who’d campaigned on
the issue in Seattle celebrated its pas-
sage as a historic victory. National
AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka
hailed it as a “milestone in the struggle
to raise wages and ensure fair pay for
all workers.” And it was the size of the
raise, not the details, that gave heart to
imitators around the country.
Business counter-attack
For the campaign that inspired the
nation, it’s no time to rest on laurels.
Both the SeaTac ballot measure and the
Seattle ordinance face business-funded
counter-attacks.
Just days after the SeaTac measure
passed, Alaska Airlines and the Wash-
ington Restaurant Association chal-
lenged it in state court. Ironically, the
Port of Seattle changed its tune about
its powers and joined the suit on the
side of Alaska Airlines, arguing that
only it, and not the City of SeaTac, has
the legal authority to set an airport min-
imum wage. A judge bought that argu-
ment, and ruled the City doesn’t have
authority over the airport within it.
Thus, SeaTac legislation went forward
for an estimated 1,600 workers at a
dozen businesses outside the airport,
but not to the 4,800 workers within.
Meanwhile, the Port gave its newly dis-
covered authority a test run: It an-
nounced a proposal for a minimum
Cement Masons Local 555
B USINESS M ANAGER - Brett Hinsley
P RESIDENT - Geoff Kossak
V ICE P RESIDENT - Jeremy Kendall
R ECODING S ECRETARY - James Lulow
S ERGEANT A T A RMS - Craig Smith
AUGUST 15, 2014
E XECUTIVE B OARD
Lyle Johnson
Ken Johnson
Ivan Taylor
Richard Curr
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Minimum wage campaigners celebrate as Seattle Mayor Ed Murray signs an
ordinance creating a $15-an-hour city minimum wage. “The economic policy
of the 34 years has failed,” Murray declared in a prepared statement. “It has
decimated the middle class, and it has created the largest income inequality
gap in our history. Seattle is trying something else…. It’s a step we recommend
to other cities around the country.”
wage for “airfield support workers” of
$11.22 an hour in January 2015, which
would rise to $13 an hour two years af-
ter that. It also promised later in the
year to consider a separate minimum
wage for airport concession workers.
Port commissioners voted July 22 to
approve the resolution.
The Washington Supreme Court
heard the SeaTac ballot measure appeal
Aug. 7, and is expected to make a deci-
sion by the end of the year. If it upholds
the ballot measure in its entirety, airport
employers will owe back pay estimated
at $17.5 million at the end of July, a fig-
ure that’s rising at $2.5 million a
month.
Meanwhile, the Seattle ordinance
faces its own lawsuit, and narrowly
missed having a hostile initiative on the
local ballot. The International Fran-
chise Association, represented by for-
mer Bush Administration solicitor gen-
eral Paul Clement, challenged the
Seattle ordinance in federal district
court, arguing that the law unfairly dis-
criminates against franchisees. And in
June and July, a business front group
called Forward Seattle sent paid signa-
ture gatherers out to the streets to push
a November ballot initiative aimed at
confusing voters into legislating a
smaller increase — $12.50 an hour, in
five years, with no exceptions. But with
polls showing Seattleites support the
$15 ordinance at about 70 percent, it
was a hard sell. Paid petitioners lied, as
documented by supporters of the city
ordinance. They would say, for exam-
ple, that the Seattle ordinance hadn’t
become official, or that their measure
would expand it statewide. In the end,
amid accusations of falsifying signa-
tures, Forward Seattle’s measure failed
to qualify for the ballot.
The wildfire spreads
In Seattle, the battle is to defend the
gains, but around the country, the move-
ment is just getting started. In Novem-
ber, minimum wage increases will be
on the ballot in Alaska, Illinois and
South Dakota, and possibly in Arkansas
and Nebraska. In Michigan, the Repub-
lican Legislature passed a law in May
to raise the minimum wage to $9.25 by
2018 — as a legal maneuver to head off
a citizen initiative that sought $10.10 by
2017. In Chicago, a proposed ordinance
co-sponsored by 21 of 50 aldermen
would increase the minimum to $15 by
2018, while Mayor Rahm Emanuel is
pushing a counterproposal for $13. In
November, residents of Oakland, Calif.,
will vote on a ballot measure that raises
the minimum wage to $12.25 and man-
dates paid sick days. And on July 29,
the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
voted unanimously to refer to voters a
November ballot measure that would
raise the city’s minimum wage to $15
an hour by 2018, no exceptions.
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