Labor Secretary Tom Perez is heading to Detroit this week to meet with fast food workers. Ahead of that trip, he's making clear his
support for the workers' organizing efforts, Dave Jamieson reports:
"I'm proud to stand with the Fight for 15 movement," Perez told The Huffington Post. "And it really is a movement. It's for shared prosperity." [...]
Perez'[s] support of the workers shouldn't be read as an endorsement of a federal $15 wage floor -- the White House and Labor Department instead back a $12 proposal recently put forth by Congressional Democrats -- but the labor secretary said he views the Fight for $15 as a model for how workers can boost wages by banding together.
"People are increasingly understanding that they're taking it on the chin at work," Perez said. "If you battle your boss alone, it's a heck of a lot harder to succeed. But when you work in concert with fellow workers not just in your workplace but across sectors, that's how you succeed."
The fast food workers—and workers in other low-wage industries who've joined the Fight for 15, from retail workers to adjunct college teachers—are doing exactly that, working in concert with fellow workers to build power. The movement has been instrumental in raising the minimum wage in cities like Seattle and Los Angeles; a wage board in New York has recommended a $15 wage for the fast food industry, which is expected to be approved soon; and major companies like Walmart and Target have made a show of raising their entry pay, though not to $15. In fact, the $12 federal minimum wage backed by the White House represents a significant increase over President Obama's original target of $9, subsequently lifted to $10.10.
Those shifts in the sense of what is just and what might be possible (if congressional Republicans weren't standing in the way) wouldn't have happened without workers in the streets demanding more. More than they have now and more than establishment political discourse said was reasonable to demand, just a couple years ago. When fast food workers started organizing, they were met with a lot of skepticism about whether they could win, whether there was a point to what they were doing. While they still haven't unionized fast food restaurants, it's clear now that there was a point and that many important victories were possible.
