Free Republic

A fair wage advocacy group is demanding that California’s new $20 minimum wage law for fast food workers be extended to all sectors to help working-class people who are struggling with the state’s high cost of living. FOX Business spoke with Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage to discuss what she described as the skyrocketing levels of home insecurity and food insecurity post-pandemic. Fast food workers winning a $20 minimum wage, she said, “was just the beginning.” Jayaraman pointed to the exorbitantly high cost of living in the Golden State where, in some counties, an individual would need a...

Minimum wage is a topic that draws a lot of attention, especially in California, a state that has one of the highest minimum wages in the United States. In a debate Monday night, Rep. Barbara Lee defended her previous advocacy for a $50 minimum wage. “In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way that came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by,” Lee said. “Another survey very recently: $104,000. For a family of one, barely enough to get by low income because of the...

NEW YORK -- It’s been a central argument for the United Auto Workers union: If Detroit's three automakers raised CEO pay by 40% over the past four years, workers should get similar raises. UAW President Shawn Fain has repeatedly cited the figure, contrasting it with the 6% pay raises autoworkers have received since their last contract in 2019. He opened negotiations with a demand for a similar 40% wage increase over four years, along with the return of pensions and cost of living increases. The UAW has since lowered its demand to a 36% wage increase but the two sides...

As cost increases persist and workers try to keep up, buzzwords like “poverty wage,” “minimum wage” and “living wage” are coming back into the lexicon, shaping conversations about what it means to make enough and who decides where to draw the line. The federal minimum wage, which was last raised in 2009, stands at $7.25 an hour. A full-time employee, working an average of 40 hours per week on minimum wage, makes $15,000 annually (which puts these workers below the poverty line in many states). A recent study from SmartAsset found that the average American worker needs $68,499 in after-tax...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Just years after labor activists persuaded a handful of states to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour, workers initially thrilled with the pay bump are finding their hard-won gains erased by inflation. New York City resident Anthony Rivera, 20, who sorts packages at a United Parcel Service facility in Brooklyn, said he had to take a second job at a grocery store after his food costs soared. “I was sitting at $15 an hour at UPS, and when it came to paying bills and buying groceries, it was starting to become not enough,” he...

Workers in Los Angeles will earn about a dollar more per hour after Mayor Eric Garcetti announced on Thursday that the minimum wage will be bumped up to $16.04 beginning in July. The hourly increase from the $15 per hour rate follows the city’s municipal code that states wages will be increased annually.

LONDON (AP) – Millions of low-pay workers in Britain will get an inflation-busting pay increase next year after the government said Monday it will legislate to raise the National Living Wage to £9.50 ($13) an hour from the current rate of £8.91 ($12.25). Britain’s Treasury said the 6.6 per cent increase, which will apply to workers age 23 and up starting in April, means a full-time worker making the living wage would get an increase of more than £1,000 pounds ($1,374.90) per year.

Bank of America increases minimum wage to $21 an hour amid labor shortages © Greg Nash The Bank of America is increasing its minimum wage to $21 an hour amid labor shortages across the country, The company announced the increase Wednesday, following its move in May to make all its U.S. vendors pay its employees at least $15 an hour. “Our company’s focus on Responsible Growth requires that we provide a great place to work,” said Sheri Bronstein, chief human resources officer at Bank of America.

Minimum wage laws appear to me to be unconstitutional because I do not find the legislative power in the constitution for Congress to legislation wages. Setting that concern aside something about minimum wage laws puzzles me. Some workers increased their value to the job market to earn more than the min wage. An example of what puzzles me is a person who worked hard and increased their job skills is now earning $15/hour. This person has several people working for him who is doing the job he used to do when he was paid min wage. He likely is working...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he does not support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, throwing a major wrench in Democrats’ already fraught hopes of giving workers a major pay raise. Manchin, who is among the most moderate of the Senate Democratic Caucus, did, however, open the door to a more narrow increase in the minimum wage from its current $7.25. “I’m supportive of an increase that’s responsible and reasonable, and in my state that’s $11,” Manchin told congressional reporters, adding that the rate should account for inflation. Manchin is bucking his own party’s leadership. House Democrats have...

Billionaire activist and 2020 Democrat Tom Steyer pledged to push for a $22 minimum wage if he wins the White House in November. Steyer made the pledge while campaigning in Winnsboro, South Carolina, on Sunday. His minimum wage standard is the highest so far of the Democratic presidential primary field. The federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 for the past decade. Washington, D.C., and 29 states have set higher standards, however. Steyer’s wage floor is set much higher than what most politicians and activists are currently calling for. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete...

Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers. If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture. Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of...

Iran has increased its offensive cyberattacks against the U.S. government and critical infrastructure as tensions have grown between the two nations, cybersecurity firms say. In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted U.S. government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails, according to representatives of cybersecurity companies CrowdStrike and FireEye, which regularly track such activity. It was not known if any of the hackers managed to gain access to the targeted networks with the emails, which typically mimic legitimate emails but contain malicious software....

ALBANY — AOC will be waiting tables once again. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is returning to her restaurant roots this week to show support for the federal Raise the Wage Act and abolishing below-minimum wage for tipped workers in the Empire State. The Bronx-born freshman congresswoman plans to pour a few pints and take a few orders at a restaurant in her district on Friday at an event organized by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, the Daily News has learned. The exact location will be revealed later in the week.

When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups, it found that more men than women were receiving less money for doing similar work. The surprising conclusion to the latest version of the annual study contrasted sharply with the experience of women working in Silicon Valley and in many other industries. In response to the finding, Google gave $9.7 million in additional compensation to 10,677 employees for this year. Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money....

**SNIP** “As the minimum wage went up, we saw massive job growth, a stronger economy, and the biggest drops in unemployment in the communities where the most people, some 30 or 40 percent of workers, benefited from the increase,” Farnitano said. Farnitano added that, rather than shutting down or downsizing, many employers had a hard time filling available positions. “In Massachusetts, there’s places where low-wage workers can’t survive on $11 an hour,” Farnitano said, referencing 2017′s minimum wage. “So they move somewhere else, and then those businesses can’t find people to fill those jobs after.” Christopher Carlozzi, state director for...

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro raised the minimum wage by 300 percent to 18,000 bolivars per month, around $6.70, as part of routine wage hikes in an economy suffering from annual inflation approaching 2 million percent.

Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday to gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, a long-shot plan that comes as the party tries to bill itself as a champion of the working class. The proposal to hike the U.S. wage floor from the current $7.25 will likely fail in the GOP-held Senate even if it gets through the Democratic-controlled House. However, the new House Democratic majority sees the measure as a message that it wants to lift low-wage workers and boost the economy — and an effort to focus on its policy priorities amid the longest government shutdown...

The legal minimum wage for New York City employers with 11 or more workers rose more than 15 percent on Dec. 31, 2018, to $15 per hour from $13, giving fast-food, retail and other employees a bump in pay. But some New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers' hours just to stay afloat. It's the third rise in the city's base wage since Dec. 31, 2016, when it went to $11 an hour. The latest increase is part of a plan that phases in minimum wage hikes across New York...

Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker said Monday he still plans to raise the minimum wage within his first six months in office — but he stopped short of saying just how much it should increase.