Striking fast food workers have helped change the conversation on the minimum wage and lift entire states up.
Tuesday night was a bloodbath for Democratic politicians, but Democratic policies won some real victories at the state and local level. The minimum wage was the highest profile of those, and measures
raising the minimum wage in four states and a pair of cities performed well, as expected:
In Alaska, a minimum wage increase led in early returns, winning 69 percent of the vote with 28 percent of precincts reporting.
The wage increase won its biggest margin of victory in Arkansas, where it garnered 65 percent of the vote. In Nebraska, 59 percent of voters approved raising the minimum wage, while in South Dakota, the margin was 53 percent.
Minimum wage initiatives also prevailed in San Francisco and Oakland, California.
These measures will bring in a wide range of new wages, from a low of $8.50 an hour in 2017 in Arkansas to San Francisco's high of $15 in 2018. And they will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers, starting on January 1 in most cases. This matters enormously—and it will be a much-needed balm to workers who may well be hurt, going forward, by larger numbers of elected Republicans legislating against them.
These measures are also a powerful reminder of the importance of organizing. When fast food workers first started organizing and striking, with a $15 an hour wage as one of their centerpiece demands, it sounded outlandish even if you knew that in some American cities it still wasn't a living wage. Now, two American cities have passed $15 an hour. Washington, DC, is on its way to $11.50. Massachusetts is on its way to $11. Vermont is on its way to $10.50. Hawaii, Connecticut, and Maryland are on their way to $10.10. California is on its way to $10. These are real advances that would not have happened without working people fighting, and making demands that establishment politicians would never make and the media couldn't quite believe were real. Too much of the country is still left at the poverty wage of $7.25, thanks to a Congress that has not acted and definitely will not act. But the momentum toward something better is real, and it's coming from the streets and the workplaces.
