Okay, the council meeting hasn’t even started yet, but its a festive atmosphere in council chambers as the throng of $15 minimum wage supporters gathers for the inevitable.
Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it’s official, as well as fill you in on various updates.
UPDATE 1:59PM: Just like me, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has already released a celebratory statement:
Today’s vote in Seattle will go down in history as a milestone in the struggle to raise wages and ensure fair pay for all workers. It is proof that when working people organize and make their voices heard, we all benefit.
While Republicans in Congress fail to act, Seattle, along with other cities and states around the country, is ensuring that workers receive a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work. We have already seen progress in states from Hawaii to Minnesota, and we will continue to fight to provide every worker with a good living wage and an opportunity to achieve the American Dream.
UPDATE 2:23PM: Unlike previous council meetings, Subway franchisees and other business representatives seem to have abandoned the chambers to minimum wage advocates. No doubt there was plenty of pro-business lobbying behind the scenes, but they appear to have given up on making their case in public. Public testimony continues.
UPDATE 2:39PM: Council member Nick Licata: “Unfortunately, I was unable to attend last week for the vote on training wages.” Council member Tim Burgess: “Good.”
UPDATE 3:15PM: Council member Kshama Sawant closes her speech in favor of the ordinance: “Fifteen dollars in Seattle is just the beginning. We have an entire world to win.”
UPDATE 3:39PM: It’s official! Ordinance passes 9-0! Audience cheers, than quickly files out, leaving council to continue other business.
Sawant will only be happy when Seattle is a business wasteland, crushed beneath the treads of her Communist ideals.
@1 I’ll help you pack. If an employer can’t pay $15 an hour, I don’t want him/her around here. We’ll both be a lot happier if you move to Alabama or Bangladesh.
Name: Richard Trumka
Title: PRESIDENT
Gross Salary: $277,486
Benefits & Other Compensation: $24,446
total Compensation: $301,932
@1 and @2 Or Somalia!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0
(never gets old)
Some troll posted a while back that workers are paid what they’re worth, not what they need. Given that everyone, even Steve Ballmer, always “needs” more than he has, which is why we’re all trying to get more, the second half of this statement expresses a truism of human nature. But the first half, the part that matters, is nonsense. It’s one of those political shibboleths that makes for a catchy sound byte but is profoundly false as an explanation of real life.
What employers pay has little to do with what employees are worth. It’s determined almost entirely by the relative bargaining power of the parties. And that game isn’t played on a level field, because employers always have a stronger bargaining position, which they will go to great trouble and expense to maintain, for example by breaking unions and absorbing strikes.
No free market advocate will ever convince me that a typical employer decides what to pay an employee based on what he contributes to the business. Maybe a few do, but not many. Employers pay what they have to, and no more, to fill a position they consider necessary. If an employer can get away with paying $10 an hour to a worker who brings in $100 of profits for every hour worked, that’s what he’ll pay. Private for-profit business is not a profit-sharing arrangement.
People who (falsely) argue that workers aren’t worth more than their employers pay them also either don’t understand or are ignoring the reality of “market failure.” They may try to tell you that unregulated markets always set the prices of goods, services, and labor “correctly.” That is not remotely true, never has been, and never will be. Market failures are frequent and pervasive.
Some opponents of minimum wages are now taking the tack that employers should be free to pay workers “what they’re worth” and government should provide the rest of “what they need.” As a matter of policy choice, that’s one possible way of doing it, but ask those employers if they’re willing to pay the taxes needed to support those government benefits and you’ll get a rant about how overtaxed they already are, about how the “welfare state” destroys the incentive work, blah, blah, so these folks really don’t deserve being given much credence on this subject. After all, there’s no point in shifting their labor costs to taxpayers unless they can shift those taxes to someone else, which is their intent all along. Or, alternatively, make a political trade of higher safety net spending for a lower minimum wage, and then work behind the scenes to defund the government benefits they promised to low-wage workers.
Markets don’t work the way they should. If they did we wouldn’t have factories burning down or collapsing and killing hundreds of workers in places like Bangladesh. Minimum wage laws protect workers and taxpayers. Employers don’t need protecting.
“@1 I’ll help you pack. If an employer can’t pay $15 an hour, I don’t want him/her around here. We’ll both be a lot happier if you move to Alabama or Bangladesh.”
Good luck with that. Even our local right-wing friends aren’t stupid enough to reside where their favored policies rule. In fact, we could do a graph of vitriolic opposition to liberalism vs. distance from Space Needle. It would be asymptotic to the Needle itself…
@3 Trumka is very underpaid in relation to the size of the organization he runs and his responsibilities. Most ballplayers get more than that as an advance on their signing bonus. With average CEO compensation now over $10 million a year, a CEO candidate would laugh at $300k. He’d expect more than that as a moving allowance.
I’m looking forward to my $25+ hourly wage!
“@3 Trumka is very underpaid in relation to the size of the organization he runs…”
It’s quite a “tell,” isn’t it? By what logic do we criticize an advocate for higher pay by noting he’s better-paid than the workers for whom he advocates?
Opponents of well-paid labor aren’t merely cheap, mean, or ignorant of economics. They simply can’t think logically.
[Deleted]
Hey Really Dumb Fuck @ 3…
Look at THIS:
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto.....2013-08-28
Just how fucking STUPID are you, anyway…asshole.
Well, the Seattle City Council voted 8-1 for the bag fee (authored by Nickels and Conlin) only to have it repealed by voters.
Listening to the BBC radio last night in bed, I heard had a segment on the $15/hr minimum wage in Seattle. If things go just right, Seattle will lead the way all over the world.