Closing The Wage Gap
Read more about efforts to reverse income inequality.
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May 3, 2021
Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Issues an Executive Order to Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 for Federal Contractors
By White House Briefing Room April 27, 2021 for the The White House Today, President Biden is issuing an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of workers who are working on federal contracts. These workers are critical to the functioning of the federal government: from cleaning professionals and maintenance workers who ensure federal employees have safe and clean places to work, to nursing assistants who care for the nation’s veterans, to cafeteria and other food service workers who ensure military members have healthy and nutritious food to eat, to laborers who build and repair federal infrastructure. ...more -
April 26, 2021
Punch Pizza announces it's raising starting wage to $15 an hour
By:Declan Desmond April 25, 2021 for Bring Me The News The $15-an-hour minimum wage movement has gained at least one key adopter in the Twin Cities: Punch Neapolitan Pizza. The local chain, which boasts 12 locations around the metro, made the announcement on Facebook this weekend: Punch says that, "starting today, all newly hired employees will start at $15/hr," and that "100% of our current employees are also getting a raise." "We think our employees are our number one asset," the post says. "When we ask customers why they return to Punch the top two answers, closely ranked, are the quality of our pizza and our engaged, friendly employees." As WCCO notes, Punch is "one of the first Minnesota restaurant companies to make this leap to a $15 minimum wage." The station says the company will also be expanding its training programs along with the wage increase. ...more -
April 19, 2021
Addressing racial health inequities includes addressing the minimum wage
By Kashmira S. Chawla, Nancy Oriol and Ashley O'Donoghue for The Hill April 18, 2021 Over the past year, we have witnessed the national outcry against our “race-based caste system,” the frailty of our social safety nets and economic precarity disproportionately affecting communities of color. This stems from barriers rooted in poverty and discrimination with downstream collateral of inaccessible housing, education, transportation, healthcare and job security with paid sick leave and a living wage. It is well established that poverty and low-income status are associated with worse health status and outcomes. Currently, there is a feverish inward focus on increasing inclusion, representation and research to challenge structural racism within healthcare systems. However, empowering patients entangled in this complex web of racially-driven societal structures and intergenerational poverty cannot be achieved with insulated healthcare initiatives and policy changes. One of the ways to do this is to support federal policy that affects one of the tenet social determinants of health: a living minimum wage. ...more -
April 6, 2021
Editorial: Marin equity divide makes income initiative a worthy experiment
By: Marin Independent Journal Editorial Board April 3, 2021 Turning talk into action, Marin Community Foundation and Marin County are joining forces to launch a universal basic income initiative aimed at providing 125 low-income single minority mothers with $1,000 per month for two years. The goal is to bridge the economic equity chasm and racial divide in our county. The foundation is committing $3 million and the county is investing $400,000 for the trial to see how a guaranteed income can help address poverty and racial inequities. “We are starting with those moms with the greatest aggregate of challenges; low income, young children and facing the daily travails and insults of overt and covert racial discrimination,” said Thomas Peters, the foundation’s chief executive. ...more -
March 29, 2021
The $15 Minimum Wage Isn’t the Only Way to Raise Worker Pay
By: Katie Bach and Zeynep Ton for Politico March 29, 2021 To the disappointment of many on the left, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 relief package did not include an increase in the federal minimum wage, dimming the prospect of setting a national wage floor at $15. But there is another step the administration can take to push companies to pay more: disclosure. There’s a business maxim that goes, “What gets measured, gets managed.” If it’s not possible to pass legislation to impose higher minimum wages, the administration can still put upward pressure on wages by requiring companies to disclose data on their workers’ take-home pay. Pay disclosures would let employers, employees and investors all know if workers are earning enough to support themselves and their families. ...more -
March 22, 2021
Biden faces fresh pressure from the left to raise the minimum wage
By: Ayelet Sheffey March 19, 2021, Business Insider While the lack of a minimum wage increase in the latest stimulus bill was a blow to many progressives, they aren't giving up the fight to ensure the wage gets increased this year. And ...more -
March 15, 2021
Women's History Month is the right time to raise the minimum wage
By: Ben Jealous for the St. Louis American, Tues March 14, 2021 It is time for a maximum push for a new minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has not budged for more than a decade. But the cost of living keeps rising. So, low-income people fall further and further behind. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would lift millions of working people out of poverty. This is especially true for families headed by women, especially Black women, who are disproportionately clustered in minimum-wage jobs. ...more -
March 11, 2021
Senate minimum wage battle could play out in midterm elections
By: Jessica Goodhart for The Guardian Capital and Main March 9, 2021Sara Fearrington, a North Carolina waitress, joined the Fight for $15 campaign two years ago. A server at a Durham Waffle House, her take-home pay fluctuates between $350 and $450 a week, leaving her struggling to pay bills every month. She voted for Joe Biden, who had pledged to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was the first time Fearrington, who is 44, had ever voted in a presidential election.
...more“It would mean everything. It would create stability for my household,” she said of the impact that a higher wage could have on her and her family of five, which includes her husband, who suffers from a rare lung condition, and a granddaughter who has asthma.
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August 18, 2020
Seattle Mayor Unveils Plan for Ride-Hailing Minimum Wage
By Justin Steale Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan last week unveiled legislation she said would guarantee ride-hailing drivers are paid at least the city's minimum wage plus reasonable expenses. Durkan said she intends to transmit the ...more -
July 28, 2020
Joe Biden wants a $15 minimum wage - will the coronavirus pandemic make that more likely?
By Elisabeth Buchwald July 25, 2020 A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage has long been on many Democratic lawmakers’ wish lists. They could have the chance to cross that goal off their lists come November with former Vice President ...more
