When the editors at Yes! Magazine first asked me to write a piece on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage struggle, I initially joked that they’d have to change their name to No! Magazine, because, you know, I don’t have much of a portfolio writing upbeat, forward looking pieces on local politics. But in fact, if there’s ever a political story to instill optimism, it’s “$15 and Change: How Seattle Led the Country’s Wage Revolution…”
Shortly after 11 p.m. that night, May 29, 2013, Durocher walked off her $9.19 an hour job to become the first fast-food worker in Seattle to strike for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The next day, hundreds of Seattle fast-food workers and their supporters followed her lead, temporarily shutting down as many as 14 restaurants to chants of “Supersize our salaries now!”
It was an outrageously ambitious goal—a 64 percent pay hike to more than twice the federal $7.25 an hour minimum wage. Yet only one year and four days later, the Seattle City Council met their demands, unanimously approving the first $15 minimum wage in the nation. Seattle’s path to a $15 minimum wage is a winding tale of effective organizing, smart messaging, bold experimentation, opposition missteps, and blind dumb luck. It is also a roadmap for bypassing our nation’s partisan gridlock by rolling out a broader progressive agenda one city at a time.
You can read the whole thing in the latest issue of Yes! Magazine, available online and on newsstands now.
It’s maybe not the smoothest piece I’ve ever written, but that’s totally my fault—I turned in a kajillion more words than they asked for (I originally included a historical context that stretched all the way back to 1905, because I’m just like that), and so some of the narrative flow necessarily got lost in the editing. Still, I think I give a pretty good overview of how the fast food strikes, the SeaTac $15 minimum wage initiative, and Kshama Sawant’s unlikely victory all played off of and into each other to yield the larger victory, sowing the seeds for similar victories nationwide.
Give it a read and let me know what you think.
And if you’re wondering what else I’ve been doing to pay the bills since leaving The Stranger, well, I’ve got news to share soon on that front too, as well as what it might mean for the future of HA. Stay tuned.
No mention of how Ed Murray came out in favor of the $15 so early? I remember at the WA Bus Candidate Survivor event way back in July 2013, he said “yes” to $15 in the lightning round section, and I was very (pleasantly) surprised. That was even before Sawant had blown onto people’s radars in a big way. I hope you don’t have an anti-Murray bias keeping you from giving credit where it’s due. Murray had a huge role in making $15 something safe for establishment politicians to support and bringing it to a reality. The striking workers and SEIU are the real story but Murray deserves as much credit or more than Sawant in my book.
@1 So, did you click through and read the whole piece before commenting, or just the two paragraph excerpt?
Goldy’s launching franchises all around the fair state, however he’s got to run the numbers to make sure there’s fewer than 500 employees nationwide across all the franchisees. HASpokane, HAEverett, HAYakima, HAEnumclaw, and dedicated HARogerRabbit and HAPuddybud outlets.
@3 You joke. But I did once actually own the domain names HAPortland and HANation. Alas, never followed through on those plans.
I read the whole thing. You mentioned him twice, off-hand.
A big reason (though not the whole reason of course) $15 moved forward is that the Seattle political establishment accepted it. Murray and his “lock stakeholders in a room and negotiate” strategy was a big part of that element of it, and I think he’s a bigger part of the $15 story than you describe.
@5 Ed’s office did not return my requests for an interview when I was writing this piece. Had they, there would have likely been a quote from him in there somewhere. But it’s a big story with limited column inches available. Couldn’t fit in everything.
Don’t mean to diminish Ed’s role in hammering the final deal out, but he’s not the one who laid the groundwork for it. The fast food strikes, SEIU’s SeaTac initiative, and the Sawant campaign are what forced the issue over the top. Ed didn’t pledge support until the end of September, a little more than a month before the election.
@Goldy: I hope big things come your way. You deserve big things. I consider you our local “digby”, and for me that’s right up there with the very, very best, bar none.
I predict that Goldy will announce he purchased The Seattle Times at a bankruptcy auction.
Sweet, sweet karma.
Lol @8. Unfortunately, he’d have to declare bankruptcy to offload all the pensions of former reporters. But for a few months he could “unmask” all the contributing writers of editorials (former and future) and replace all appearances of Tim Eyman in the back catalog with the appropriate moniker….
A terrific piece; nice to have a concise history to share with others. It would be great if you could find a way to make the longer, more detailed original available, maybe as a web-only or subscriber-only version on Yes! Magazine’s site? I’d subscribe for that alone. Footnotes? Icing on the cake.
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