$15! A Great Big Wage Hike in Seattle, a Great Big Movement Nationally

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180079/15-great-big-wage-hike-seattle-great-big-movement-nationally



The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for five years, even as income inequality has become a more and more pressing issue. Yet, as recently as a year ago, prospects for meaningful increase in base pay for the working poor seemed remote.

Then fast-food workers struck, unions began to make real demands and election results confirmed that people were ready to support great big wage hikes.

Now, doubling the minimum wage is on the agenda.

Actually, that prospect is now moving off the agenda and into official policy in one of America's largest cities—Seattle—where the city council will on Monday approve implementation of a $15-an-hour minimum wage. The specific accomplishment in Seattle is strikingly significant; as Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant says, "We forced them to lift 100,000 low-wage workers in Seattle out of poverty—to transfer $2.5 billion to workers at the bottom of the wage scale over the next ten years."

What is just as significant is the context in which it has come, after what Sawant correctly refers to as "decades of wealth being transferred almost entirely from the bottom up."