Blog Posts  (Page28)

By Big Labor and For Big Labor…

Survey of US Economists on a $15 Federal Minimum Wage The University of New Hampshire Survey Center conducted a survey of economists for the Employment Policies Institute (EPI). The specific areas of interest are economists’ opinions on a $15 minimum…

The “Raise the Wage Act,” introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-CA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) in March 2015 would raise the federal minimum wage by 66 percent to $12 an hour. The legislation received a high-profile backer this fall in Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Proponents say that such a…

Voters in Portland, ME, will next week decide at the ballot box whether to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. It’s a controversial proposal: The City Council just increased the city’s minimum wage  to $10.10 an hour, and many local voices — including the editorial board of the Press-Herald and…

Big Labor wasn’t going to let a fellow traveler disparage the $15 minimum wage without a response. Earlier this month, liberal economist Alan Krueger wrote an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that “a $15-an-hour national minimum wage would put us in uncharted waters, and risk undesirable and…

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor was widely-ridiculed for its attempt to exempt union members covered by collective bargaining agreements from the $15 minimum wage it had championed for the city. As the Los Angeles Times wrote in a scathing editorial:  It’s stunning that after leading the fight for a $15…

Advocates for a dramatically-higher minimum wage–in cities including Seattle, San Francisco, and Oakland–have come face to face with an embarrassing downside for their movement: Unflattering press coverage. Past increases in the minimum wage were often in the range of a dollar or less, phased in over a number of years.

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in May his intention to impanel a wage board to “examine the minimum wage in the fast food industry,” fair-minded observers understood the implications: The minimum wage was going up, and it was most likely rising to the $15-an-hour level demanded by the…

Portland’s City Council recently voted to raise the city’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Now, proponents at the Maine AFL-CIO have launched a referendum to raise the minimum wage statewide by 60 percent to $12 an hour. In support of this effort, a liberal advocacy group called the Maine…

Early Experiences with Chicago’s July 1st Minimum Wage Increase In December 2014, the Chicago City Council approved a law raising the city’s minimum wage by nearly 60 percent, to $13 an hour, by 2019. A press release from the office of Mayor Rahm…