SeaTac, WA Living Wage
The Green Party US pushed a Living Wage in the Green Party founding national platform and met with many groups to carry forward a Blue-Green Initiative, going back to Seattle. The efforts remain a good model of blue-green practices at work.
For 100,000 working people in Seattle, a newly passed citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour will mean an increased standard of living - and recognition of their contributions to the local economy. "It's going to help me and a lot of other people..."
Since 1994, when a coalition of labor and community groups came together in Baltimore to win the first such policy, the living wage movement has spread across the United States. The basic argument behind these campaigns is that a person working full-time shouldn't have to live in poverty, a precept that has been popularly accepted. The National Employment Law Project estimates that over 120 cities have passed similar laws, including a notable win in 1998 in San Jose, California, which established the highest living wage in the nation for those who received public funds.
"No person who works a full-time job should have to live in poverty."
○ ○ ○ ○
Cities are passing higher minimum wages – and leaving the suburbs further behind