This is a lesson in how frustrating advocating and achieving a reform can be. Seattles $15 is “a minimum wage plan so complicated reporters can’t understand it,”
Workers will fall under one of four classes depending on the size of the business they work for, whether they get tips and whether the employer provides healthcare.
The proposal gives big business—defined as those with more than 500 employees nationally—three years to raise wages to $15 an hour, and four years if they provide healthcare. “Small” businesses, which cover more than 99 percent of businesses in Seattle and 70 percent of full-time workers, have seven years—until 2021—to get to $15 an hour if they only offer wages. If the employer offers healthcare or the worker earns tips, then those dollar amounts will be added to wages so their “minimum compensation” is $15 an hour by 2019.
What will happen to workers’ wages if a business adds or cuts healthcare that changes its schedule? Could a Burger King manager put out tip jars for employees and claim the tips count toward the minimum compensation? Given that fast-food corporations indemnify themselves from any legal responsibility for workers in their outlets, what if McDonald’s franchise owners claim they are independent small businesses and hence fall under the seven or even 11-year schedule? How will Seattle enforce these provisions? After the city criminalized wage theft in 2011, it failed to prosecute a single case for two years, despite City Council hearings last year where workers exposed “pervasive” wage theft in the fast-food industry.
Why the plan is so complicated, labor leader, David Rolf, a committee co-chair and president of Service Employees International Union Healthcare 775NW tells In These Times, "Our goal was to negotiate something that had business and labor support and the highest chance of moving through the City Council." Asked why profitable megacorporations like McDonald's can't afford to pay workers $15 an hour immediately, Rolf says that, "They undoubtedly could," but "a purist position" would not have gotten a supermajority of committee support.
50 percent of the mayor’s advisory committee represents Seattle businesses, including two Chamber of Commerce representatives. Through the Chamber, Starbucks got a seat at the table, but the workers of Starbucks didn’t get a seat at the table.
Kshama Sawant, elected to the Seattle City Council last fall on a platform of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, says the proposal is a step forward but also that the committee “watered down the proposal as much as they could.”
Having struggled to get a reform passed, the struggle is now to get it implemented, and then another struggle in the future to keep it from being rescinded
Workers will fall under one of four classes depending on the size of the business they work for, whether they get tips and whether the employer provides healthcare.
The proposal gives big business—defined as those with more than 500 employees nationally—three years to raise wages to $15 an hour, and four years if they provide healthcare. “Small” businesses, which cover more than 99 percent of businesses in Seattle and 70 percent of full-time workers, have seven years—until 2021—to get to $15 an hour if they only offer wages. If the employer offers healthcare or the worker earns tips, then those dollar amounts will be added to wages so their “minimum compensation” is $15 an hour by 2019.
What will happen to workers’ wages if a business adds or cuts healthcare that changes its schedule? Could a Burger King manager put out tip jars for employees and claim the tips count toward the minimum compensation? Given that fast-food corporations indemnify themselves from any legal responsibility for workers in their outlets, what if McDonald’s franchise owners claim they are independent small businesses and hence fall under the seven or even 11-year schedule? How will Seattle enforce these provisions? After the city criminalized wage theft in 2011, it failed to prosecute a single case for two years, despite City Council hearings last year where workers exposed “pervasive” wage theft in the fast-food industry.
Why the plan is so complicated, labor leader, David Rolf, a committee co-chair and president of Service Employees International Union Healthcare 775NW tells In These Times, "Our goal was to negotiate something that had business and labor support and the highest chance of moving through the City Council." Asked why profitable megacorporations like McDonald's can't afford to pay workers $15 an hour immediately, Rolf says that, "They undoubtedly could," but "a purist position" would not have gotten a supermajority of committee support.
50 percent of the mayor’s advisory committee represents Seattle businesses, including two Chamber of Commerce representatives. Through the Chamber, Starbucks got a seat at the table, but the workers of Starbucks didn’t get a seat at the table.
Kshama Sawant, elected to the Seattle City Council last fall on a platform of a $15-per-hour minimum wage, says the proposal is a step forward but also that the committee “watered down the proposal as much as they could.”
Having struggled to get a reform passed, the struggle is now to get it implemented, and then another struggle in the future to keep it from being rescinded
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