On Tuesday, the Washington, D.C. city council voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020 — a bill that Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) says she’ll sign into law. That makes the nation’s capital the latest place to embrace the wage floor that has been championed by a growing movement of fast food and other low-wage workers.
In 2012, fast food workers in New York City went on strike for the first time ever, demanding they be paid at least $15 an hour and also given the right to form a union. Since then, they have staged a series of increasingly large strikes across the country and drawn in workers from other industries, such as child care providers and adjunct professors.
The movement has since experienced a string of victories on increasing wages. Seattle became the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage in 2014, and San Francisco joined it later that year. Los Angeles passed a wage floor of that level in 2015, and then this year, California and New York both passed $15 minimum wages that will go into effect in years to come.
California, New York Launch 60 Million Americans Into A $15 Minimum Wage EconomyEconomy by CREDIT: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File With the strokes of two pens on opposite sides of the country on Monday…thinkprogress.orgUnder D.C.’s plan to institute a $15 minimum wage, it will automatically rise to $11.50 in July and increase by about 70 cents a year until the full wage goes into effect in 2020. It will also index it to increases in inflation in years after it takes effect, automatically rising as prices rise. The legislation still awaits a final council vote on June 14.
Some advocates for low-wage workers were disappointed, however, by the part of the legislation that leaves intact a lower minimum wage for workers who earn tips, such as waiters and hairdressers. While the city council voted to increase the tipped minimum wage from $2.77 to $5 an hour and also index it to inflation, Bowser’s original proposal got rid of a tiered wage floor altogether and would have guaranteed tipped workers the full $15 minimum wage, impacting an estimated 29,000 people. Calling the deal to raise D.C.’s minimum wage a “positive step for many workers,” Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the restaurant worker advocacy group ROC United, said in a statement that “this deal was made on the backs of over 29,000 hard working women and men, and many people of color, in the restaurant industry” and called it a “disgrace.”
But progress has been made elsewhere. The impact of the Fight for 15 movement has reverberated up to the presidential race, where Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has vocally supported increasing the country’s minimum wage to $15 and rival Hillary Clinton has said she would sign a bill doing the same, although would rather one that increases it to $12 an hour. Both have also embraced the idea of doing away with the national tipped minimum wage, leveling it for all workers regardless of whether they get tips.