In 2014, union and community activists in the working-class Seattle suburb of Sea-Tac passed an initiative raising the minimum to $15-a measure designed to provide economic relief to low-paid workers at the Seattle Airport.With allies among unions, community groups, and religious organizations, these campaigns-by groups like OurWalmart and the Fight for 15-organized strikes and rallies that shamed employers like McDonald's and Walmart to raise wages. Beginning in 2012, fast-food workers, big box–chain workers, janitors, and other low-wage employees mobilized in campaigns demanding that their employers provide better pay and working conditions.Today, 42 percent of American workers earn less than $15 an hour. Americans are increasingly aware of the outrageous salaries and bonuses handed to CEOs and top corporate executives while wages and living standards for the majority of workers have stagnated. That language, and dichotomy, has shaped how politicians talk about the economy and has influenced how the media report on economic issues. Now everybody in America-regardless of their political views-understands the idea of the 1 percent and the 99 percent. Beginning in 2011, Occupy Wall Street changed the nation's conversation about inequality.Most of these laws affected relatively few employees, but they helped change public awareness about the plight of the growing numbers of 'working poor.' The idea quickly spread and, pushed by unions and community organizing groups like ACORN and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, more than 150 cities passed similar living-wage laws in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1994, Baltimore adopted the first municipal 'living wage' law, requiring companies with city subsidies and contracts to pay employers a few dollars more than the minimum wage.Ten million people will be lifted out of poverty because workers joined together and acted like a union.' 'And there has never been a stronger case for why workers need an organization to help them improve their lives. history when more workers in more places have won a common demand,' said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, the primary organizer and funder of the Fight for 15 campaign. And New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney said he will put a $15 an hour on the ballot in 2017. Columbia University said it was raising pay for student workers to $15. The increases would take longer in upstate New York, hitting $12.50 in 2021, then increase to $15 based on a still-to-be-determined schedule.Īlso last week, the largest private employer in Pennsylvania-the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-announced it was raising its minimum wage to $15 by 2021. In the suburbs of Long Island and Westchester County, the wage would reach $15 by the end of 2022. In New York City, the wage would increase to $15 by the end of 2018. The day after California adopted its historic law, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he had reached an agreement with the state's legislative leaders to raise that state's minimum wage to $15 on an even faster pace, although the threshold would vary in different parts of the state. Governor Jerry Brown, who endorsed the measure last week, will sign the law in Los Angeles on Monday.

No Republican voted in either chamber for the measure. The state Assembly approved the plan by a 48–26 vote, then the Senate voted for it by a 26–12 margin. By putting more money in people's pockets, the pay increase will improve the economy by increasing consumer spending in businesses throughout the state. More than 40 percent of California workers earn less than $15 dollars an hour.

The new law will boost paychecks for millions of California workers. The hike to $10.50 in January will put California ahead of all other states.

In response to that gridlock, 29 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted higher minimum wages than the federal level. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009, frozen in place by the Republican opposition. Thereafter, it will increase each year at the same rate as the cost of living. The California legislation will increase the current $10 minimum wage to $10.50 next January, then $11 the following year, and increase it by $1 annually until 2022, when it will reach $15. The ripple effects of California's huge victory for progressive forces are already being felt around the country. Last week's tectonic jolt began in California, where the legislature voted Thursday to raise the statewide minimum wage to $15, the highest in the nation.

Salariu minim 2021