Today I saw a socialist city council member attacked from the left.

[eridani]

Oddly enough, no coverage of the 15 Now! mentioned that a socialist city councio member was attacked from the left. Some wanted no phase in whatsover, and to bar usnions from agreeing to a lower wage in return for higher health care benefits. Lots of useful information at the conference. David Cay Johnson suggested that we not say that we are raising the minimum wage, but that we are restoring it.

Only in Seattle!

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023469140_wageinitiativexml.html

Signature drive to start for $15-wage vote

An organization urging adoption of a $15-per-hour minimum wage voted Saturday to begin gathering signatures to get a Seattle City Charter amendment on the November ballot, a move it hopes will provide leverage with city officials.

The group, 15 Now, held its first national conference at Franklin High School, with more than 250 people voting on what direction the movement should take.

Members voted to begin gathering a target of 50,000 signatures in support of amending the city’s charter so it would require: big corporations to pay a $15 minimum wage effective Jan. 1, 2015, with no reduction in pay to compensate for tips or benefits; a three-year phase-in for small businesses and nonprofits; and a yearly raise tied to cost-of-living increases.

About 30,000 valid signatures would be needed to get the amendment on the ballot.

The organization plans to file the signatures — thus, triggering a vote — only if city officials fail to pass their own measure that meets with the organization’s approval. The decision of whether to file the signatures will be made at a conference in June.


15 Now's National Conference Is Today

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/04/26/15-nows-national-conference-is-today

But activists are moving ahead on their own schedule. All day today at Franklin High School, 15 Now is hosting their first national conference, with people assembling from all over the US to rally and discuss strategies on raising the minimum wage to $15, here and elsewhere. Tonight at 7:30, at a closing rally, Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant will speak to conference attendees. The crowd is reportedly a few hundred strong so far.

If you wanted to follow along on Twitter, you can check out 15 Now or find some of the action at the hashtags #15now and #a26.

Why we are holding this conference

https://www.15now.org/april-26/

Seattle is poised to be the first major city to win a $15 minimum wage and a win in Seattle will be a victory everywhere for our growing movement which aims to lift millions out of poverty across the country.

Building on the momentum in Seattle and the fast food workers strikes last year, 15 Now actions were held in 21 cities across the country during the March 8th – 15th Week of Action.

But big business is gearing up for a counter-offensive to the movement for $15 and will fight tooth and nail to protect their massive profits made from paying their workers poverty wages. What will it take to beat this counter-offensive, win in Seattle and grow the movement nationally?

We cannot rely on the political establishment. Even in Seattle, where the Mayor has set up an Advisory Committee to discuss a $15/hr minimum wage, there are no guarantees, especially with big corporations campaigning to stop us. Big Business wants to defeat $15 or undermine a real $15/hr minimum wage by including tip credit and “total compensation” where tips and benefits would be counted towards wages.

We can only rely on our own strength and need to build even more grassroots pressure from below. In Seattle, we will weigh up whether or not to launch a signature gathering campaign to put a robust $15 minimum wage initiative on the November ballot to let the people of Seattle decide.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. I think this is probably a bad idea at a city level.

I think that raising the minimum wage is much more risky for a city than for a state (in the sense of "US state", not "nation state&quot , and for a state than for a nation.

The strength of the "business will go elsewhere" argument against minimum wages depends a lot of how far business would have to go. "To another country" isn't likely to happen much, but "across the city limit" is probably going to happen much more, I think, especially if the city minimum wage is twice what it is (if I've gotten the American minimum wage right, which I may not have - I'm not an American) in other parts of the country.

It's probably possible to exaggerate that effect - some businesses probably don't spend a large part of their budget on wages under $15 anyhow - but I think it is a serious concern.

[Scuba]

2. Yeah, what kind of business wants consumers to have money in their pockets?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. I'm afraid I don't think that's the crushing retort you think it is.

The most obvious flaw is that there's nothing to stop a business moving production out of the city while continuing to sell within it.

A secondary flaw is that it's only applicable to businesses whose only customers (or, at least, a major fraction of whose customers) are in the relevant city.

[pipoman]

4. And I believe a national

Minimum wage is a bad idea. A national minimum wage range is a far better idea. A minimum based on cost of living rather than one size fits all. A single national minimum is going to be too low for some areas and proportionally too high in others.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. Hmm.

Off the top of my head:

1) You're setting the minimum wage higher in areas where cost of living is high.
2) Those will disproportionately be prosperous areas.
3) This will lead to employment, and hence prosperity, moving from prosperous to less prosperous areas.

OK, I'll buy that as a potentially sensible national strategy, if my assumptions above hold water. It will both make the nation as a whole better off, and redistribute wealth from the richer to the poorer areas.


There's a probably downside involving accelerating migration, and hence causing overcrowding in some areas and decline in others - precisely what we're seeing here in the UK, with people moving to the Southeast, especially London, causing overcrowding there and decline in some other places, but that's probably a price worth paying.



One caveat is that if I were a mayor responsible for an individual city, rather than someone planning economic strategy at a national level, and wasn't keen to redistribute wealth from my city to others, (and I wouldn't be - a Mayor has a responsibility to his or her own city) I'd be chary about setting my minimum wage higher than theirs.

[pipoman]

6. The issue is

That where I live a 2 bedroom apartment in a decent area rents for around $500. Where my son lives in SoCal the same apartment rents for $1200 minimum. Groceries are 10 to 30% higher where he lives, services like auto repair and plumbing is significantly higher there...

If minimum wage is set based on a living wage where he is, it will cause inflation here. If it is set based on here, it won't mandate a living wage where he is. It is a broken system in a nation as large and diverse as the US.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. It's not so risky in Seattle.

Businesses that employ minimum wage workers and can move out of the city already have because of the occupancy costs.

It would affect retail and fast food workers mostly, and the retail employers in question would rather not move.

http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cs/groups/pan/@pan/documents/web_informational/dpdd017164.pdf

[socialist_n_TN]

8. It happens a lot.......

My group critiques Sawant and her group SAlt often and ALWAYS from the left.

SAlt is supposed to be "Trotskyist", but their actions are far from it.

[eridani]

9. What they are is the ONLY socialist organization within living memory that actually--

--mounted a serious voter outreach for an election (400 volunteers) instead of assuming that voters are all policy wonks who would surely respond to their finely reasoned platform. Plenty of things happen when you talk to average voters instead of other left policy wonks, not the least of which is that they talk back and express their own concerns.

Many immigrant small business owners (including many from her own community) talked to her about small business survival. The virtuous circle that higher wages set into motion has a lag time, and there is no reason to pub small businesses at risk before it gets a chance to really get going.

Socialists governeed for years in a number of midwestern cities, where they are remembered as models of good governance. Debs called them "sewer socialists," and said that they were more interested in cleaning the streets than in marching on them. Seattle voters expect Sawant to be a sewer socialist, and if she isn't, she'll have a single term only

[socialist_n_TN]

10. Well, it helped that that platform she ran on was NOT socialist.......

in the least. It was left-reformist all the way. The danger of that is when the left-reformist platform of a self-identified Socialist fails on the rocks of capitalism, people will think that it's SOCIALISM that has failed and not left-reformism.

[eridani]

11. These days people think that "socialism" is a generic euphemism for "public goods"

After all, Repukes have been demonizing all public goods as "socialism" for the last 40 years, no one listens to actual socialists when they say otherwise, and Democrats don't do much but occasionally mumble that public goods aren't really what is traditionally meant by socialism.

Which is why millenials favor socialism narrowly over capitalism--they've been totally fucked economically and could use some public goods. If public goods are socialism, then they'd like a big heaping plateful of that good stuff.

Yes, Sawant essentially ran on the WA State Democratic Party Platform, which is why Democrats and quite a few alienated genereric lefties supported her.