A REAL raise
By Workers Strike Back. Published May 11, 2023
Almost two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, as the cost of basics like food, housing, and healthcare continue to dramatically outpace wages.
Working people are struggling, but the billionaires are making historic profits, raking in a record high of $2.54 trillion in last year’s third quarter alone.
The “Fight for $15” began over a decade ago, yet Congress still won’t pass a bare minimum wage of $15 an hour at the federal level. The “progressive” Democrats and the Squad have even stopped talking about it to avoid embarrassing President Biden, and to avoid drawing attention to their own failure to fight for workers, which would require actually challenging Biden and the Democratic Party establishment.
More than 120 million Americans live in states where the minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. This includes large states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Texas. When Democrats won a majority in Congress in 2020, they had the opportunity to raise the wages of millions of workers in these states. Doing so would not only have improved the lives of millions of working people, it would have been a major political blow to the Republican Party. The Democrats refused to do so, because they were unwilling to take the tiniest step to stand with workers against exploitative bosses.
Now, after ten years of inaction and historic inflation levels, $15 an hour is far from enough to live on in any major city in the United States. And as workers’ standards of living are falling through the floor, instead of raising wages corporate politicians are courting disaster in sparring over the debt ceiling.
That’s why Workers Strike Back is fighting for a $25 an hour minimum wage, and an immediate 20% raise for ALL workers, with automatic cost-of-living increases to stay above the rate of inflation.
To win a REAL raise, whether in our workplaces, in a city, or at the federal level, history shows that working people will need to build powerful movements.
We can see that in how the fight for $15 scored its first big victory, in Seattle in 2014, with the leadership of socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative. At that time, the $15 minimum wage was dismissed as “utopian” and “impossible,” but rather than limiting themselves to what was acceptable to the political establishment, Councilmember Sawant and Socialist Alternative launched the “15 Now” grassroots campaign. 15 Now organized mass conferences, rallies, neighborhood actions groups, and filed a ballot initiative for $15/hour in case the City Council Democrats refused to act. It was only under that enormous pressure that the law was won, despite all the best efforts of Democratic Party politicians to block it or water it down.
As Kshama Sawant explained at the time: “15 was not won at the bargaining table as the so-called ‘sensible compromise’ between workers and business. It was not the result of the generosity of corporations or their Democratic Party representatives in government. What was voted on in the city council was a reflection of what workers won on the street over this last year.”
Workers are organizing, striking, and demanding higher wages—at Starbucks stores around the country, in Seattle at the University of Washington and PCC grocery stores, in Michigan, in Minneapolis and at Amazon workplaces like KCVG in North Kentucky where they are fighting for $30/hour and a union!
Politico recently reported that the push for higher minimum wages is again gaining momentum: “After inflation rocketed upward last year in a way not seen in decades and upended policy calculations made only a few years prior, those pushing for higher minimum wages see a rare opening to gain ground on progressive policy making.”
A strong indication of the support for a real raise in the minimum wage is also demonstrated at the ballot box, even in “red” states like Florida, where voters have overwhelmingly passed minimum wage increases.
In addition to a real raise, we need real improvements in our quality of life. We live to work, not work to live! Instead of long hours and multiple jobs just to pay the bills, we need to shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits. Working people make society run and we also demand better working conditions, paid time off, health care benefits and even a say in how we run companies and what is done with the profits.
The bosses aren’t about to give in because working people ask nicely. The greatest fear of the capitalists is that workers will realize the collective power we hold, organize and fight back in the millions. This is beginning to happen globally, as we’ve seen with outrage against the cost of living leading to mass protests and strikes in Germany, France, Britain and elsewhere. These mass protests point toward what is necessary to fight for a real raise and for fundamental change in the interests of working people.
Our only path forward is through struggle. Please donate to help rebuild a fighting labor movement & a new working-class party that can win a real raise for all workers. Donate today!
