NCL expresses support for ending the subminimum wage for tipped workers in the state of Connecticut

/in , , , , , , , , /by

March 4, 2024

Media contact: National Consumers League – Melody Merin, melodym@nclnet.org, 202-207-2831

Washington, DC – NCL CEO Sally Greenberg recently testified to the members of the Committee on Labor and Public Employees of the Connecticut General Assembly urging the inclusion of ending the subminimum wage for tipped workers in SB 221. In Connecticut, the subminimum wage for tipped workers is currently at $6.38 per hour.

The restaurant industry in Connecticut “needs to stop basing its business strategy on a 150-year-old system that is the direct legacy of slavery and join the modern working world,” says Greenberg. “It is time to raise the wage and ensure Connecticut’s restaurant industry does not get left behind.”

Greenberg cited One Fair Wage’s recent report claiming the current restaurant industry isn’t facing a worker shortage but rather a wage shortage. One Fair Wage recently published a fact sheet showing a comparative analysis of small business restaurants in Connecticut vs in California.

Greenberg’s full testimony can be found here.

###

About the National Consumers League (NCL)

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

NCL celebrates the 1-year anniversary of the passing of One Fair Wage’s Initiative 82 in DC

/in , /by

November 8, 2023

Media contact: National Consumers League – Melody Merin, melodym@nclnet.org, 202-207-2831

Washington, DC – To commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the passing of One Fair Wage’s Initiative 82, a ballot measure that phased out the tipped wage paid to workers in the District of Columbia, NCL’s CEO Sally Greenberg joined One Fair Wage and countless workers, employers, and consumers to celebrate at Busboys and Poets in DC.

On election day 2022, DC voters supported the passage of Initiative 82, which lifted tipped workers from the subminimum wage to a full minimum wage that would be phased in over five years. One Fair Wage is a national coalition, campaign, and organization seeking to end all subminimum wages in the United States and increase the sustainability of wages and working conditions in the service sector.

Speaking at the celebration, Greenberg thanked the workers and consumers in attendance along with DC Councilmembers Brianne Nadeau and Robert White, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb, and Andy Shallal, owner of the DC establishment Busboys and Poets.

“NCL strongly supported Initiative 82 to end the tipped wage in DC and the One Fair Wage campaign across the country,” said Greenberg. “Consumers spoke loudly in the last election and voted to pay tipped workers a minimum wage. With the passing of Initiative 82, consumers get better service and workers get better wages – that’s a win-win.”

NCL also co-signed The Sky Is Not Falling; The Floor Is Rising, a report released by One Fair Wage that includes the voices of workers, employers, and consumers on their experiences one year after the passage of I-82, and includes the only government data on restaurant employment impacts currently available in the short period since implementation of the wage increase began.

###

About the National Consumers League (NCL)

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

 

National Consumers League supports legislation to end the tipped wage in Montgomery County, MD

/in , , , , , /by

October 17, 2023

Media contact: National Consumers League – Melody Merin, melodym@nclnet.org, 202-207-2831

Washington, DC – The National Consumers League’s (NCL) CEO Sally Greenberg will testify today, October 17, before the Montgomery County Council in support of phasing out the tipped wage and providing all tipped workers the minimum wage.

Tipped workers in Montgomery County are scheduled to appear before the county council today to share their thoughts about Bill 35-23. The legislation would adjust the calculation of the minimum wage for tipped workers and phase something known as the tip credit amount.

NCL believes that the tipped wage is bad policy and keeps servers and other tipped workers at the mercy of customers’ whims on tipping. NCL also supported Initiative 82 in the District of Columbia which passed overwhelmingly and is being implemented.

As one Council member in DC noted, when considering phasing out the tipped wage, the current law “is an invitation [for employers] to cheat.” According to surveys here in the county, more than a third of Montgomery County workers say their tips did not bring their wages up to the minimum wage. In fact, in Montgomery County, restaurant workers are twice as likely to live in poverty.  The bill, introduced by Councilmember Will Jawando, will end the tipped minimum wage gradually over the next several years.

Greenberg’s full testimony can be found here.

###

About the National Consumers League (NCL)
The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

 

 

 

National Consumers League calls on auto industry to bargain fairly with workers

/in , , , , , /by

September 28, 2023

Media contact: National Consumers League – Melody Merin, melodym@nclnet.org, 202-207-2831

Washington, DC – The National Consumers League (NCL), the nation’s longest-operating consumer organization, calls on the auto industry to bargain fairly with the very workers who have helped the industry become extremely profitable.

Though top-scale assembly workers earn $32.32 an hour, lower-tier workers who joined the company after 2007 earn less than $17 an hour. By comparison, many McDonald’s franchises are paying starting workers $15 per hour.

For years, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union gave up general pay raises and lost cost-of-living wage increases to help the companies control costs during tougher economic times when the industry struggled. Now, the industry is thriving. The “Big 3” auto companies—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—saw profits skyrocket 92 percent from 2013 to 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Total profits of the Big 3 were $250 billion for the decade.

Today, the striking UAW union is asking for 36-percent raises in general pay over four years. Compare that to Detroit’s three automakers that have raised CEO pay by 40 percent over the past four years. Workers should get similar raises.

CEO salaries dwarf the pay of even the best-paid assembly line workers. General Motors (GM) CEO Mary Barra was paid $28.98 million in 2022; Ford CEO James Farley received nearly $21 million; and Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares’ 2022 pay was $24 million.  Barra’s pay was 362 times the median employee earnings of $80,034 at GM.

“We believe that those who work on the assembly line building America’s cars deserve the same percent of pay increases that CEOs receive,” said Sally Greenberg, CEO of NCL.  “We support those who make our cars and wish them victory in their valiant battle for fair wages and benefits.”

###

About the National Consumers League (NCL)
The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

Dispatches from Durban: May 15-20, 2022

/in , , , , , /by

Reflections on the 5th Global Conference on the elimination of child labour in Durban, South Africa: May 15-20, 2022

Reid Maki is the director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League and he coordinates the Child Labor Coalition.

The recently-concluded week-long “5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour” in Durban, South Africa was convened against the backdrop of the announcement last July of an alarming rise in child labor numbers after two decades of steady and significant declines in global child labor totals.

The global conference, which typically comes about every four years, brought together an estimated 1,000 delegates from foreign governments and small number of representatives of NGOs. It also brought together for the first time at one of the quadrennial child labor conferences dozens of participant youth advocates as well as a number of child labor victims and survivors.

The conference had the difficult mission of righting the ship and trying to reverse the rising child labor numbers, which seem destined to rise further as the COVID pandemic’s impact will continue to be felt for years. Sadly, the pandemic threw 1.6 million children out of school, often for prolonged periods and some of those children entered work and may never return to school.

We would first like to thank the South Africa government for the herculean task of organizing a global conference during a still raging pandemic, all against a backdrop of devastating floods in April that savaged the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Easter Cape and killed nearly 500 people, destroyed 4,000 homes and displaced 40,000 people.

As the conference opened, Guy Ryder, the Director General of the International Labour Organization, which helped advise the government of South Africa on the organization of the conference, suggested that the rise in 8 million child laborers from 152 million to 160 million likely represented complacency and a loss of focus by global governments on the child labor problem and must be rectified. He noted increases in child labor impacting children under age 11 and urged delegates to redouble their efforts. “We need to increase our efforts, and pay particular attention to child labor in agriculture,” said Ryder, who added that child labor advocacy is threatened by a “perfect storm” created by COVID’s enduring impact, rising food insecurity, and debt crises that are expected to impact 60 nations in the coming years.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramamphosa delivered a stirring welcome. He noted that his country’s embrace of child rights is not just a matter of principle. “The assertion of the rights of children was a direct response to the deprivation, discrimination and deliberate neglect that had been visited on the black children of this county by successive colonial apartheid administrations,” said Ramamphosa. “Child labor perpetuate the cycle of poverty, denying young people the education they need to improve their circumstances. It condemns communities to forms of economic activity and labor that limit any prospect of advancement or progress.”

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi noted the particular challenge that the sub-Saharan African region is facing with the highest rates of child labor and one in five children are in child labor.

Satyarthi urged listeners to embrace the idea that every single child can be protected from child labor. “Let us march from exploitation to education,” he urged, calling for children to have a “fair share” of resources. The amount needed to ensure all children have access to needed resources is only $53 billion – not much considering the wealth of many nations, said Satyarthi who also noted that the G7, which is about to meet on June 26th, has never focused attention collectively on child labor. “This needs to change,” he urged.

The conference opened with a pledge by European Union (EU) Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen that the EU will create a new $10 million euro initiative to reduce child labor in agriculture. Child labor must return to the political agenda, she urged.

The six-day conference, attended by 1,0000 delegates in person and an estimated 7,000 online, according to organizers, featured workshops and side events, and included three meetings every other day by separate groups of employers, workers, and governments. Readers can find a conference agenda here with video links to many sessions.

Twenty-four side events focused on many related topics including child labor in supply chains, a decent work agenda, youth-led activism, small-scale mining, livelihoods skills development, African priorities, partnership in Latin America to end child labor, due diligence legislation, data and research needs, labor inspections, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture, and a child-labor-free zone in Ghana. For a complete list and to view specific side events, please go to agenda, scroll each day’s offerings and click links to the videos.

Attendees learned a lot about specific intervention efforts, and the struggles many nations are engaged in, including Malawi, which has recently been hit by two cyclones and where there is a shortage of 50,000 schools – less than half of the children have access to education, said the nation’s Education Minister Agnes Nyalongje. She pleaded for international help, noting that 12 years of sustained aid could create generational change in Malawi and fix its troubled education system.

It’s difficult to summarize the hundreds of hours of content but readers may get a sense from the CLC’s twitter stream which included four to five dozen original tweets at @ChildLaborCLC.

The conference’s concluding “Call to Action” document emphasizes the need for urgent action, because “the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, and food, humanitarian and environmental crises threaten to reverse years of progress against child labour”. The document includes commitments in six different areas:

  • Make decent work a reality for adults and youth above the minimum age for work by accelerating multi-stakeholder efforts to eliminate child labour, with priority given to the worst forms of child labour.
  • End child labour in agriculture.
  • Strengthen the prevention and elimination of child labour, including its worst forms, forced labour, modern slavery and trafficking in persons, and the protection of survivors through data-driven and survivor-informed policy and programmatic responses.
  • Realize children’s right to education and ensuring universal access to free, compulsory, quality, equitable and inclusive education and training.
  • Achieving universal access to social protection.
  • Increasing financing and international cooperation for the elimination of child labour and forced labour.

As is often the case at conferences, many of the side conversations are of great interest. We had many great conversations with Simon Steyne, who recently retired from the International Labour Organization but continues his child labor advocacy. Simon is campaigning to bring about a child-labor-in-agriculture conference in the coming year. With 70 percent of global child labor in agriculture and rising child labor rates, a focus on agriculture at this time is absolutely essential, Steyne argued.

What might have been improved at the conference? It seems that a relatively small number of Civil Society participants were invited to the conference, included few from the Americas and Asia. The pandemic and travel distances certainly impacted in-person attendance. And we know a lot of NGO participants were able to join online. We hope that a broader spectrum of Civil Society is invited to future global child labor conferences. NGO delegates often possess in-the-field, grass roots knowledge lacked by government and employer groups and NGO presence is a key element in the fight to reverse accelerating incidence of child labor.

The Civil Society advocates and experts who were there enhanced the conference greatly, mostly through the two dozen side events. We were delighted to be joined at the conference by CLC members Bank Information Center and GoodWeave, which organized the side event “Child Labour Free Supply Chains: Tackling Root Causes from Maker to Market” — included panelist Thea Lee, the deputy undersecretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, who was ubiquitous at the conference. CLC-member Action Against Child Exploitation (ACE) also presented a side event: “Promoting an Integrated Area-based Approach to the Elimination of Child Labour: A Case of the Child Labour Free Zone in Ghana,” with Yuka Iwatsuki, president of ACE among the panelists.

In addition to thanking our gracious South African hosts and the ILO for its organizing role, the CLC also wishes to express appreciation to our valued partners the Global March Against Child Labour and the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation for enhancing the conference significantly through organizing side events and bringing the voices of youth advocates to Durban.

Tara Banjara. 17, was among the youth advocates who appeared as a panelist. Tara said she is from a community in India where there are no schools and “no one had an idea about what education is.” She was four and half when she went to work on roads with her mother. They cleaned garbage and rubble out of potholes. The work was exhausting and difficult and went on till she was rescued by Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s Bal Ashram.

Today, Tara is the first girl to complete grade 12 exams in her entire family. She asked attendance participants gathered in Durban and the thousands on line: “Is this our fault that if we are born in a small village, we do not have the right to live our childhood with freedom?” She asked.

“We want freedom. We want the right to education,” Tara said, sharing her dream of becoming a police officer some day and working at the grassroots level to ensure that all children have equal rights and freedom. In one of the conference’s emotional high points, Tara asked attendees to stand and make a pledge: “Let us all pledge to create a world where every child is free from slavery; every child gets an education and an opportunity to fulfill their dreams.”

Raise the Wage Act 2019: House majority looking to lift millions out of poverty

/in , , , , /by

headshot of NCL Health Policy intern Alexa

By NCL Health Policy intern Alexa Beeson

June 16 marked the longest period the United States has gone without an increase in the federal minimum wage. The federal wage floor was last raised a decade ago, in 2009. The current minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, which is a poverty wage by federal standards, but tipped workers and people with disabilities often make even less. Worse yet, the value of this wage has decreased by 13 percent since its enactment due to inflation.

Many states have increased their minimum wages, including some red states like Arkansas and Missouri. These states have done so through the popular-vote referendum process. There is widespread support from all Americans–Democrats and Republicans alike–on this issue. In fact, 70 percent of Republican voters want a raised federal wage floor. There are still 21 states, however, whose workers receive only the bare minimum federal wage or, even worse, a tipped wage.

The U.S. House of Representatives, now led by a Democratic majority for the first time in many years, will be taking up the Raise the Wage Act (H.R. 582), and there is a companion bill by the same name in the Senate (S. 150).

The Raise the Wage Act will incrementally lift the federal wage floor to $15 an hour over the next five years. If enacted, the legislation would reduce levels of poverty across the nation without driving vulnerable populations into unemployment. It will also help decrease the wage gap between minimum and median wage workers. The House is expected to have a roll call vote on H.R. 582 before the August recess. If it does pass in the House, the act will have a hard time making it through the Republican-controlled Senate. However, this is still a progressive step in the right direction.

This act will also end subminimum wages for tipped employees. If employees make less than the $7.25 federal minimum wage, including tips, employers are supposed to add the rest to their paycheck. However, some employers fail to do so. The affected employees can make as little as $5 less than the minimum wage. The way the system works now, customer gratuities act as wage subsidies that we believe should be covered by the employer. For those concerned with whether raising the minimum wage will stop customers from tipping, studies show that eliminating the tiered wage system will not stop patrons from leaving tips.

Raise the Wage will end the subminimum wage for people with disabilities, some of whom make mere pennies an hour. Subminimum wages act as a form of legalized discrimination, and this bill will make it impossible for employers to get new special exemptions to pay their employee’s subminimum wages. It will also end current exemptions because all wages will be increased to $15 an hour in the next seven years.

Some fiscally conservative groups have claimed that raising the wage to $15 an hour would lead to high unemployment or business closures, with small businesses burdened by the extra costs. However, studies contradict those claims. Many show that raising the minimum wage would have little or no impact on employment. A study conducted by the University of California at Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment found that when the town of Berkeley raised the minimum wage, it actually saw a decrease in unemployment and a reduction in poverty. Further research showed that wage increases in 51 counties over 45 states had no adverse effect on employment hours or weeks worked.

NCL has been a long-standing advocate for fair minimum wages. In the early 1900s, the League’s General Secretary Florence Kelley ran a minimum wage campaign, which passed laws in 14 states. We are encouraged to see the House of Representatives taking affirmative steps to raise the federal minimum wage.

Alexa is a student at Washington University in St. Louis where she studies Classics and Anthropology and concentrates in global health and the environment. She expects to graduate in May of 2020.

Minimum wage gets a boost in state initiatives

/in , , , /by

Did you know that Arkansas will soon have the highest minimum wage in the United States at $9.25 an hour come January 2019? A quarter of the state’s workers will get a raise! Missouri isn’t far behind, with an initiative passing this fall as well.

As Congress and state legislatures remain in gridlock and unable to move progressive legislation, another very hopeful phenomenon is playing out through the initiative process, even in deep red states. Ballot initiatives are allowing citizens to directly support legislative reforms. As the Arkansas example shows, the greatest beneficiaries are those making minimum wages.

The federal minimum wage is stuck at a paltry $7.25;  for seven years, Congress has taken no action to change that. But 29 states, from Maine to Hawaii, and more than a dozen cities have increased their minimum wages. This translates into 60 percent of minimum wage workers making higher than the federal floor, adding $5 billion to the paychecks of 4.5 million low-wage workers.

Ten states are boosting their wage floors step by step, including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington. Automatic cost-of-living increases will kick in in eight other states: Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, and South Dakota.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. The “Fight for $15” movement launched a campaign in liberal areas, first winning at Seattle Tacoma Airport in November 2013 with a referendum for $15 an hour. Within two years, New York and California had adopted $15 an hour as their target. The only thing that is slowing this campaign is state legislatures. When Albuquerque, Chicago, Los Angeles, Providence, Kansas City, San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Fe each adopted their own minimum wage laws, 18 state legislatures passed laws preempting cities from increasing minimum wages.

Even the liberal DC City Council overruled Initiative 77, which would have done away with tipped wages and ensured all workers in the District earn the minimum wage.

The takeaway here is that increasing the minimum wage turns out to be very popular when placed on the ballot by initiative, even in red states like Arkansas. But reactionary state legislatures, bowing to pressure from the business community, too often work to undo these laws.

We are also cheered by Amazon’s announcement that it will pay all its workforce a base $15 minimum wage and JPMorganChase will pay $18 as a base wage.

Things are looking up for hourly workers. Florence Kelley, NCL’s General Secretary for our first 33 years and drafter of the first minimum wage laws in the United States, is surely smiling down upon us!

NCL’s experiences with Initiative 77, DC’s repealed One Fair Wage attempt

/in , , , /by

Earlier this month, DC City council voted to repeal Initiative 77 in an 8-5 vote. The initiative, which was supported by DC residents by a 55-44% vote, would have eliminated the gap between the “tipped credit” and minimum wage for restaurant workers and ensure that all tipped workers get the minimum wage that other workers are entitled to.

As it stands, tipped workers in Washington DC get a base tipped wage of $3.89 per hour plus tips. If workers don’t get the minimum wage—which is currently $13.25 an hour in DC—employers are supposed to make up the difference. Initiative 77 was intended to shift the burden of ensuring wage equality from consumers to employers, where we believe it actually belongs.

National Consumers League took a personal interest in this issue because of our extensive history with raising the minimum wage over the decades. We testified before the DC City Council in support of Initiative 77 in what was a marathon hearing that started at 11 am and ended at 3 am. In our testimonies, we emphasized the extensive history of the minimum wage laws unfairly carving out tipped workers, while stressing the importance of ensuring that DC’s most vulnerable make an equitable wage. Our testimonies also included the personal experiences of a staff member that has worked in various front-of-house and back-of-house restaurant positions at businesses in Oregon, a one fair wage state, and Georgia, a non-one fair wage state.

Supporters of the Initiative were, by and large, people of color or professionals with extensive experience in labor law or wage policy. The most vocal opponents of the bill were restaurant employees or small restaurant owners in DC’s most affluent neighborhoods. Opponents followed what seemed to be scripted testimony, arguing that Initiative 77 was a bad bill because it came from “outside of DC” or that implementing it would be the first step of a “grand plan” to eliminate tipping.

In our view, the public hearing showed a clear bias for those opposed to Initiative 77. DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson—an avowed opponent—led the hearing. Witnesses in favor of repeal were stacked onto the beginning of the hearing, while key supporters of Initiative 77 spoke much later—well after many of the councilmembers had left. Sadly, the council showed a lack of understanding about Initiative 77 and its potential impact on DC as a whole.

Opponents on the Council also expressed opposition to any type of compromise to Initiative 77. At no point during the hearing, did Chairman Mendelson or Councilmember Jack Evans—also an avowed opponent—suggest that they were open to a compromise or that they were willing to meet with groups to address concerns about the plight of tipped workers in DC. Mendelson went so far as to attack one witness from the Restaurant Opportunities Center’s DC office (ROC-DC) when he called the woman back on the stand and suggested she was a plant used by ROC to gather support for the bill. Despite this, ROC-DC and other advocates appeared more than reasonable, suggesting potential compromises; offering an extended timeline for wage increases, tax cuts, and others. Many of the council members that voted for the repeal—most notably Councilmembers Jack Evans (Ward 2), Phil Mendelson (Chairman), Kenyan McDuffie (Ward 5), and Anita Bonds (At-Large)—kept saying that 77 used deceptive language to sway voters. “The language in [Initiative 77] was misleading at best, dishonest at worst,” said Mendelson shortly before the October vote. Why? He didn’t say.

Yet the campaign slogan for those opposed to 77 was “Save Our Tips” despite there being no restriction of the tipping practice in the Initiative 77 bill. We believe that voters were not duped and that the bill passed in every ward, besides Ward 3, because DC’s residents wanted to better the lives of tipped workers. As Councilmember Robert White Jr. said in the public hearing, “[we] cannot assume that voters were ignorant after a campaign of fierce campaigning on both sides.”

Nevertheless, the DC Council voted in favor of repealing the bill. In spite of the sensible wage protection policy offered, the repeal of a measure that reflected the will of the people in the District Of Columbia, which is exactly what 77 was. Initiative 77 is another example of hardworking employees losing to big money—the National Restaurant Association spent millions to defeat 77 and when they lost that battle, persuaded the DC Council to overturn it—and ultimately being ignored. Voters showed up and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Initiative 77, yet the council responded by telling voters that their vote doesn’t matter and their voice is not important. What a sad day for democracy in our nation’s capital.

Thank you to the  DC City Council members that respected the votes of DC residents and supported the remedying of wage inequality by voting for Initiative 77.

Charles Allen (Ward 6)

Mary M. Cheh (Ward 3)

Brianne K. Nadeau (Ward 1)

Elissa Silverman (At-Large)

Robert White, Jr. (At-Large)

D.C. City Council Angers Voters by Moving to Overturn Initiative 77 – National Consumers League

/in , , , , /by

By NCL Public Policy intern Melissa Cuddington

After the passage of Initiative 77, seven members of D.C. City Council pledged to overturn the initiative, essentially suppressing the will of the voters. This move by the City Council has further outraged D.C. voters, who already feel disenfranchised. Considering the 80,000 DC voters who weighed in on this issue, its no wonder.

In the past few weeks, there has been controversy surrounding Initiative 77 and its hope of survival in D.C. City Council. Initiative 77, a worker-led campaign that passed by a 56% to 44% margin, would raise the minimum tipped wage by $1.50 a year until it reaches $15.00 by 2025. Currently, in the District of Columbia, the minimum tipped wage is a mere $3.33. Employers are allowed to pay tipped workers this small amount if tips make up the difference. Therefore, if tipped workers make at least $13.25 in tips, the current minimum wage, then employers are “off the hook” for covering the difference.

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, even those who voted against the initiative agreed that the City Council should not negate the will of the people. Those interviewed for the article responded with heated comments saying, “it enrages me,” and, “the City Council shouldn’t assume an electorate…doesn’t know what they are voting for.” These are not isolated responses; many voters have reached out to their City Council members, strongly protesting the possibility of repeal.

NCL supported the OFW campaign but regardless, it is not democratic or just for the City Council to overturn the decision of the voters. Many, including the leading group in this effort, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), have accused the City Council of voter suppression and stomping on democracy. 

NCL believes in Initiative 77 and shedding the distinction between a tipped and minimum wage. We also strongly believe that civic participation is the foundation of our democracy. If the City Council moves to overturn this measure, it will send a very negative message to voters about the importance of the democratic process and the value of their voice in it.

Equal Pay Day – National Consumers League

/in , /by

Sally GreenbergWhat does Equal Pay Day mean in America? It’s a time for reflecting on why women still less than their male counterparts. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women earned 59 Cents for every dollar earned by men. That number in 2013 has inched up but still lingers at 78 cents. That’s too bad, because women are the sole bread earners in millions of families and the lack of parity in pay hurts them and their children.

What does Equal Pay Day mean in America? It’s a time for reflecting on why women still less than their male counterparts. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women earned 59 Cents for every dollar earned by men. That number in 2013 has inched up but still lingers at 78 cents. That’s too bad, because women are the sole bread earners in millions of families and the lack of parity in pay hurts them and their children. As the House Minority Leader says, “When women succeed, America succeeds.”

The Economic Policy Institute reports that the higher up the economic ladder, the greater the disparity. In 2014 women in the 95th percentile of female earners made 79% of the wages earned by men, while women in the lowest 10th percentile made 91 cents for each $1 earned by men. Not surprising that 2/3 of minimum wage workers are women. What surprised me is that women with college degrees earn 78% of their male counterparts and women with advanced degrees earn 74% of what men make. And in traditionally female occupations, men even make more there! Male registered nurses out-earn female nurses by an average of $5,100 per year. This seems like rank sexism to me, and we could begin to change it with new laws in place.

And yet, in 2010, 2012 and 2014, the leadership in Congress blocked consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which President Obama supported, and NCL and many other groups have campaigned for. That legislation would extend pay-equity rules to federal contractors and update the Equal Pay Act.

Women’s pay equity shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All families, whether Democratic, Republican, Independent or unaffiliated, will benefit when women earn more. This week’s Equal Pay Day is a fine time to raise these issues again – increasing the minimum wage has strong support in red as well as blue states. Equal pay for women should be right behind it.