Fast food workers and their allies in New York City, supported by protestors elsewhere around the country, flooded public hearings in New York today with the message that they deserve at least $15 an hour. They testified before a wage board appointed at the behest of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to determine standards …
The List of the Fight for $15’s Victories—Tangible and Intangible—Is Getting Longer Read More »
Jen Piallat, the owner of Zazie in San Francisco, knows what it’s like to work in the American restaurant industry. “I worked on the restaurant floor for 30 years before I owned my own,” she said. “I didn’t have savings or health insurance until I was 35.” The story is very different for her employees …
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is announcing today a bill that will raise the city’s minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour for those who work for the city’s larger employers. The plan would steadily raise wages by $1.25 an hour per year until 2020. However, small businesses that gross less than …
It’s a good thing for pop music, honky-tonk feminism, and Canadian tax collectors that McDonald’s pays lousy wages. If the food stores paid their frontline workers enough to survive on, Shania Twain would still be working there, a shareholder claimed at the company’s annual meeting this week. The unidentified man, who said he’d been a …
The Bizarre, Shania Twain-Based Argument For Keeping McDonald’s Wages Low Read More »
In the largest protest of its kind, thousands of McDonald’s employees stormed the company’s headquarters today to demand that it stop spending millions manipulating stock prices, and start paying workers a living wage. McDonald’s cashiers and cooks came to the company’s shareholders meeting, at its corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. More than 100 were …
Not Lovin’ It: Thousands Storm McDonald’s HQ To Protest Low Wages Read More »
Facebook issued new employee benefit guidelines that raise minimum pay to $15 and extends leave for third-party contract employees who work behind the scenes on the social network’s campuses. In a blog post Tuesday, Facebook’s chief operations executive Sheryl Sandberg wrote that contractors and vendors in U.S. will have to adhere to new standards, including …
Facebook Just Made Sure Even Their Janitors Are Making At Least $15 An Hour Read More »
Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced that he is taking advantage of a state law to raise minimum wages without the involvement of the legislature. He’s not the only governor with that power; others could also follow suit. New York State law gives the labor commissioner the authority to convene a wage …
States Where Minimum Wages Are Supposed To Be Living Wages Read More »
Governor Cuomo announced yesterday that he’ll use state law to impanel a Wage Board to examine the minimum wage in the fast-food industry. The fast-food cooks and cashiers who started the Fight for $15 movement are showing how ordinary people make change happen when they stick together. Governor Cuomo’s move to set a dramatically higher …
New York wage announcement is a bold step forward, will strengthen economy for all of us Read More »
The Labor Department is moving ahead with President Obama’s eagerly awaited overtime pay expansion. That’s good news, but we don’t know yet how good. Currently, workers who make as little as $24,000 a year can be denied time-and-a-half if they’re considered managers—even if most of the work they do isn’t managerial. Obama has promised to …
Obama is a step closer to expanding overtime, but for how many American workers? Read More »
The basic facts of the tipped worker minimum wage are appalling: It’s $2.13 an hour, and has been since 1991, because whenever the minimum wage is raised, the restaurant industry launches a massive lobbying effort to keep tipped workers from being included. The median wage for tipped workers is $8 an hour, and one in five …
$2.13 Often Means Zero-Dollar Paychecks for Tipped Workers Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
