Fight For $15

by | Sep 22, 2016 | News

wi_jobs_nowWisconsin Jobs Now began in 2011 with SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin’s support of nearly $1 million in that first year. This was at the beginning when Fight for $15 was still beginning to try to become a movement. 5 years later and Wisconsin Jobs Now has decided to dissolve its affiliation with the Fight for $15 movement. While the official announcement states this to be a mutual decision between WJN and SEIU, only time will tell the real reasons behind it. Meanwhile, the Fight for $15 movement has developed a religious stance – one that says if you support this movement, you stand on morally “higher ground.” The Higher Ground Moral Declaration is available for any and all to sign. It equates supporting a $15 minimum wage with the “economic liberation of all people, criminal justice reform, ensuring marginalized communities have equal protection under the law, etc.” While it’s easy to say that supporting a higher minimum wage means you’re a better person, what if it doesn’t? What if this higher minimum wage ultimately hurts the people it’s touted to help? The additional jobs brought to Washington, D.C. by Walmart and Wegmans grocery would have helped those people…had both companies not pulled out of their expansion due to D.C.’s newly passed $15 minimum wage. You can hardly blame the companies. At least, it looks like Chris Christie wouldn’t. That’s why he vetoed New Jersey’s recent minimum wage proposal stating that such a radical increase “would trigger an escalation of wages that will make doing business in New Jersey unaffordable.” Alberta, Canada just joined the likes of Washington D.C and others making their regulations official for a $15 minimum wage by 2018.

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