DC-Area Unionists, Low-Wage Workers Celebrate Enactment Of Minimum Wage Hikes
Thursday, January 16, 2014(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
D.C.
area unionists and low-wage workers joined Jan. 15 in a festive celebration of
new minimum wage hike laws in the nation’s capital and its two big Maryland
suburban counties – landmarks in the national drive to raise the wages of the
nation’s poorest workers. The gala at the AFL-CIO headquarters marked the
signing of the D.C. law to raise the city’s minimum, now $8.25 an hour, to
$11.50 hourly in three steps by 2016. It also includes paid sick leave
for restaurant workers. Before that, the two big Maryland suburban counties,
Montgomery and Prince George’s, acting in concert with the capital, raised
their minimums over the same time period to the same level. The federal
minimum, $7.25 hourly, now covers the counties. That joint raise is important:
It prevents businesses, principally restaurants, from playing off one area
against another to pay their workers less. But the hike still leaves one
major
hole: D.C.’s Virginia suburbs, which cannot raise wages unless the state
legislature lets them. Advocates said the lawmakers in Richmond are the
next target.
“This evening, our chant is not ‘Yes, we can,’ or
‘Yes, we will,’
but ‘Yes, we did!’” exclaimed Metro Washington Council President Jos
Williams, whose council led the fight for the hike in the District, and who
emceed the evening, which followed a debrief with key activists led by Williams
and attended by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice
President Tefere Gebre. Shuler called the local effort “the kind of coalition
we need to bottle and spread across the country.” Williams said that it was
really the “struggle, tenacity and determination” of the low-wage workers
and
the unionists to help “those at the bottom” seeking to better themselves
that
won the fight.
The ceremony featured a parade of union leaders and
politicians,
including one latecomer to the cause: D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D). He
signed the law that morning, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s
Birthday,
as soon as it reached him, he said. Montgomery County Executive Ike
Leggett and Prince George’s Executive Rushern Baker, both Democrats, signed
their counties’ increases long before. What Gray left unsaid was that he
first
proposed studying the issue, then proposed a raise to $10 an hour and that he
signed the wage hike only after the council voted 13-0 for it. He also
hadn’t planned a signing ceremony until the Metro Council prodded him. Gray
also had to move, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), reminded the crowd,
after the mayor vetoed a law that would have raised the minimum wage at
non-union “big box” stores to $12.50 hourly. That law was aimed at
Wal-Mart, known for its notoriously low wages and bad benefits.
“It
was a defeat, but out of that came the strength to move the minimum wage
legislation” on a regional level, Mendelson said. “If you make $7.25 an
hour,
you can’t make ends meet,” added Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., whose district
includes
parts of Prince George’s. “When you have to ask for low income
heating assistance, food stamps and rental subsidies, that’s wrong. "And
the work is not done,” she added, referring to both Virginia and efforts to
raise the federal minimum.
- special report by Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates, Inc. for Union City;
photos by Chris Garlock