Regarding the Tacoma City Council's $12 minimum wage proposal
Working Washington issues the following statement regarding the proposal to send a three-year, $12 minimum wage measure to the ballot in Tacoma:
Despite overwhelming public support for higher wages, the Tacoma City Council may very well be on the verge of doing the impossible: proposing a minimum wage increase that nobody can get behind.
A strong majority of the council’s own minimum wage task force recommended a phased-in $15 minimum wage. The fast food workers who have gone on on strike and risen up across the country know that we need at least $15 to be able to support ourselves. And even the business lobby groups who claim to be backing the $12 proposal sound like they’d prefer if workers got no wage increase at all.
Working Washington will certainly not be supporting the current proposal for a multi-year plan to raise the wage to $12. It simply takes far too long, and offers workers far too little. We urge the Council to instead move forward with the majority proposal of the minimum wage task force, which actually gets workers to a living wage.
If the Council is going to ignore the work of its own task force and leave Tacoma to choose between a quick increase to $15 and a slow path to $12, there’s not much question how workers will vote.
More information from Tacoma fast food workers: