Los Angeles considers $15 wage
2015 2015-06Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
The words are the paper's own, from its digital file; the division into articles was made by machine, so a box or caption can end up inside the article next to it.
Scan page 4
There is a chance that over one million work ers in Los Angeles will see their minimum wages move up to $15 an hour by 2020. The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 for the measure after a raucous hearing in which workers gave passion ate presentations about the need for a living wage.
Almost half of wage and salary workers in Los Angeles, the country’s second largest city, make less than $15 an hour, according to a report pre sented by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.
The vote sent the measure to the city attorney to prepare a wage ordinance to go to the full coun cil and then to the mayor, who supports the ordi nance. They had previously passed an ordinance raising the minimum wage for some hotel work 4 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2015 ers to $15.37, and the union representing Los An geles School Workers last year won a floor of over $15.
This ordinance will raise the minimum wage from $9 to $10.50 next year, with annual increases to reach $15 by 2020. Businesses of less than 25 workers will have an additional year to reach $15.
San Francisco will reach $15 by 2018 and Se attle by 2017. Los Angeles is the largest city to increase its minimum wage. The groups pressing for higher minimum wages said that the Los An geles vote could set off a wave of increases across Southern California, and that higher pay scales would improve the way of life for the region’s vast low-wage work force.
—ANN MONTAGUE working relations between police and prosecutors.”
These working relations have allowed the Baltimore Police Department a free hand in its long history of abuse and brutality against Black people, a history that includes shooting and killing unarmed, fleeing suspects.
The Black community can further the struggle for justice by relying on its own strength and its own re sources and developing its own agenda. The protest movement that takes to the streets can advance its cause by creating a political movement to take City Hall. In Baltimore, where the majority of the city’s population is Black, an important step forward would be the creation of a local Black political party, inde pendent of the Democratic establishment.
More than anywhere else in America, the Black community of Baltimore is best situated to provide a positive example for everyone throughout the country struggling for freedom and equality by moving from organized, independent protest to organized, inde pendent politics. n