THOUSANDS of workers gathered in Richmond, Virginia, on Friday and Saturday to push for a $15 per hour minimum wage.
The first national Fight for $15 Convention took place at the Greater Richmond Convention Centre. About 10,000 people attended a march on Saturday down Monument Avenue and a rally at Gen. Robert E. Lee memorial statue.
On the eve of the convention, Kendall Fells, national organiser for Fight for $15, an initiative backed by the Service Employees International Union, a labour union with 2 million members, said: ‘We chose Richmond because it’s the onetime capital of the Confederacy, and we want to draw links between the way workers are treated today and the racist history of the United States.
‘Today, if you look across the country, we are really still fighting against the legacy of slavery and racism in a lot of ways. For example, wages for black and Latino working families are lower due to discrimination in hiring, underfunded schools, a biased criminal justice system.’
Across the country, minimum wage amounts vary. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. States can raise that figure but cannot go below it. In states without a minimum wage law or with a stated lower minimum wage, the federal rate applies.
Minimum wage has been an issue in the presidential election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the minimum wage has to go up but he has not been clear on whether he was referring to the federal rate. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has supported a $12 minimum wage and has backed the Fight for $15 initiative.
Legislation introduced in Virginia General Assembly sessions in recent years to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour have failed. But a few states and localities have passed measures to gradually raise their minimum wage to $15. California has a $10 per hour minimum wage that is to increase incrementally to $15 by January 2022.
The District of Columbia’s $10.50 minimum wage will gradually increase to $15 by July 2020. New York State’s minimum will increase from $9 to $15 effective December 2018. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce opposes a $15 minimum wage. The Fight for $15 movement grew from efforts of fast food restaurant workers in New York City in 2012 to get better pay and respect.
Kendall Fells said: ‘I remember when the workers were organising themselves to go on strike. They were career fast food workers. Some had not received a raise in five, ten years. They were getting burned up and down their arms. They were getting no respect.’
He said many big companies have responded to the initiative and raised wages.
In addition, the movement has expanded to include low-paid workers in other job sectors.
Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union, said: ‘We are really proud that in Richmond the movement is growing to include retail workers from grocery stores and nail salon workers. Richmond has been a first in many things. We see Richmond … as birthing the next moment of the movement, which is going to link the fights of racial justice and economic justice and expand to include more workers from other parts of the economy.’
• Four hundred Superior Court workers in Santa Clara County, California, have been on strike for eight days for living wages and also human rights. Workers have not had a pay raise in eight years and face homelessness and some are forced to get public services because of their low pay in Silicon Valley.
Many also commute two and three hours to work because they cannot afford to live in the San Jose area. The average price of a house in Santa Clara county is $1 million and the average salary of the court clerks $55,000, forcing more and more into becoming homeless.
The independent Superior Court Professional Employees Association (SCPEA) was formed only two years ago and this strike is important for all workers particularly in the South Bay. In an appeal for funds the strikers say: ‘We are the Santa Clara County Superior Court Professional Employees Association and we represent Court Clerks, Mediators and Janitors as well as a few other classifications.
‘We are the lowest paid workers in a court system located in the highest cost county in America. We need your help! We are on strike because we have gone 8-years without a pay raise, have endured pay cuts, unpaid work furloughs and lost holidays. Our staffing has been cut by about 40%. We have been negotiating for over two and a half years and are at the end of our rope.
‘We have been let down by our management and have decided a work stoppage is our only way to get a fair contract. Please contribute what you can to support us.
‘Some of us are homeless, some are couch surfing and others are leasing portions of our homes to make ends meet. We work in the Silicon Valley where the cost of living keeps going up and inflation has eaten away at our pay.
Our union is strong, we are united and our cause is righteous. But our union is also young. We have not been able to build a strike fund and many of our members are living pay check to pay check. Yet over 310 of our members chose to stand up for themselves and fight for dignity and we are asking our friends to stand up for us as well.
‘Since we are part of a legal community, we know we have a lot of friends and supporters that we have worked with over the years to make our courts run as smoothly as possible. Please help our most vulnerable members with a contribution to this fund. Monies collected will be disbursed to members seeking financial assistance from our union. Please make a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more. We promise to distribute any contribution to our members most in need.
‘We are willing to stay out as long as it takes to be recognised and respected. If you could make a donation, it would help our cause a great deal. It would mean a lot to our members to know that we can count on our friends and supporters. Thank you to all those that have given food, water and support for our cause.
‘In Solidarity,
SCPEA’
• Elsewhere in California, St Mary Medical Centre workers picketed outside the downtown Long Beach hospital last Thursday to protest at what a bargaining team member said is management’s refusal to offer pay increases during ongoing contract negotiations.
Bargaining team member Jay Villarreal, who is employed as a social work case manager at the Long Beach hospital, said that although he has received bonus payments, he has gone four years without a pay increase – and the way negotiations have been going, he would not be able to look forward to a raise during the next three years.
Villarreal said: ‘In total, no raises for me in seven years and I said, “Enough is enough”.’ Other hospital workers clad in the purple T-shirts of Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West held up picket signs last Thursday afternoon while standing along Long Beach Boulevard outside hospital grounds.
Roughly 50 workers participated in the Thursday rally shortly after noon. St Mary Medical Centre is part of San Francisco-based Dignity Health’s hospital system, and the current round of labour negotiations involve workers at many other California facilities.
Villarreal is one of nearly 100 St Mary employees who voted to join the union in February. Some 530 SEIU-UHW members work at St Mary Medical Centre, according to the union.
