You’ve most likely glanced east recently and noticed Seattle glowing in the limelight. New Mayor Ed Murray and City Council member Kshama Sawant are shaking things up and the world is taking notice.
Mayor Murray has promised municipal workers a $15 per hour minimum wage in four month’s time, affecting 600 workers. He is also in the process of setting up a task force to develop a proposal for a citywide $15-per-hour minimum wage.
Murray says Seattle should be affordable for all wage earners, and that unless people have livable wages they won’t be able to contribute to stimulating the economy.
Council member Kshama Sawant (SHAH-mah sah-WANT) is Seattle’s first socialist on the council. She is a former economics professor and Occupy activist who ran on a grassroots campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Sawant immigrated from India in her 20s and says she was amazed to find such income inequality in the wealthiest country in the world.
“I think the basis for everything that’s happening in Seattle, and everywhere else, is the fallout of the economic crisis. In Seattle, we are seeing a city that is very wealthy but is very unequal, and has become unaffordable for the vast majority of people,” says Sawant in a recent interview.
Public awareness for raising minimum wage has been helped not only by fast-food worker strikes, but by the town of SeaTac where voters approved a $15 per hour minimum wage proposition in November for businesses with 10 or more employees. However, a court decision excluded the nearly 5,000 workers at the Port of Seattle-owned land housing SeaTac Airport. An appeal has been filed.
“15Now” organizers consider Seattle to be a launching place for $15 per hour minimum wage across the country. Their website is www.15now.org.
Meanwhile, Washington’s minimum wage increased 13 cents to $9.32 per hour in January. This is because, in 1998, our voters demanded automatic annual adjustments to the cost of living.
That means that a 40-hour-per-week McDonald’s employee (most employees are not full-time) would earn at least $372.80 per week. And that means they would make $1,491.20 for four full-time weeks.
What does McDonald’s CEO Donald Thompson make when his salary is broken down into hours? Answer: $9,247. How many hours would the $9.32-per-hour employee have to work to gross that amount? Answer: 992 hours.
Washington, by the way, has the highest minimum wage in the 50 states, followed closely by Oregon and California. The award for lowest minimum wage is tied by Wyoming and Georgia for $5.15 per hour. But it gets worse. There are five southern states that don’t even have a minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 per hour since 2009. President Obama and Democrats in Congress propose increasing it to $10.10. Who knows if it will pass, given congressional stagnation.
The Bureau of Labor projects the majority of jobs developing to be low-wage service jobs. Is this the fault of the unemployed who are still out there looking for decent work, or is this the fault of big businesses who have greedily outsourced their production jobs for increased profit?
There was an article a couple of years ago about Henry Ford. He paid his assembly line workers a $5 per day back in 1914 (that’s $118 in today’s dollars, according to MeasuringWorth.com). He did this because he wanted to increase productivity and reduce turnover — and if his employees could buy his cars, all the better for him.
That isn’t necessarily socialism, folks. That’s just good business.
— Marylin Olds is an opinion columnist and may be reached at marylin.olds@gmail.com.
