This Is What $15 an Hour Looks Like
In July, Emeryville, California, passed the highest city-wide minimum wage in the country. Here’s how workers’ lives changed—and didn’t.
On a crisp
November morning in Oakland, 50 people dressed in red T-shirts burst
into a McDonald’s, bringing breakfast orders to a halt. From behind
the counter, several cashiers gaped at the scene, where an orderly
line of customers had been replaced by a rowdy crew that bounced and
shouted, calling for the restaurant to raise its wages to $15 an
hour. A supervisor whipped out her cell phone and began filming.
The chant, directed at the workers, grew louder: “Come on out—we’ve
got your back!” After giving it some thought, three female
employees walked past their supervisor, clocked out, and joined the
protesters. The crowd erupted in cheers.
The group,
which included striking fast-food workers from across the East Bay,
gathered afterward in the parking lot to celebrate. They would hit
half a dozen restaurants before the day was over, part of a
nationwide movement that has grown to attract low-wage workers across
multiple industries. Among the strikers was Shardeja Woolridge, who
works part-time at a McDonald’s in the nearby city of Hayward,
where she lives with her mother in a two-bedroom apartment. Woolridge
earns $9 an hour, California’s minimum wage; her mom receives
disability benefits. It’s not nearly enough. They’ve received
eviction notices and had their electricity shut off. The 19-year-old
recently enrolled at Berkeley City College but struggled to pay for
textbooks. “I can hardly buy my own soap or deodorant,” she says.
Behind her, workers hoist a red-and-black banner that reads
#fightfor15.
I ask
Woolridge what might be different if she made $15 an hour. “Whoa,”
she says. “Fifteen.” Her eyes turn to the cloudless sky. “Whoa,”
she repeats, her voice trailing off. She could help pay the rent. She
could stock the fridge with food. She could afford Wi-Fi. Above all,
she could finally stop fighting so much with her mom. “We are
constantly butting heads,” Woolridge says. “She doesn’t
understand that I don’t have money. I’m like, ‘This is really
all I make,’ but she can’t get it.”
The
movement for a $15 minimum wage began three years earlier, on a
chilly fall morning in 2012, when 200 fast-food workers walked off
the job in New York City. Their demand was audacious: $15 an hour was
more than twice what many of them earned. But more strikes and
protests followed, with the movement spreading quickly, driven by
workers like Woolridge. What had started as a targeted campaign under
the slogan “Fast Food Forward” grew to include low-wage workers
across numerous industries.
“Movements
are built on big, bold, aspirational demands,” says David Rolf,
president of SEIU 775, who led the fight in 2013 for the $15
minimum-wage ordinance in SeaTac, Washington, home of the
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Rolf credits the Fight for $15
with shaping a “monumental shift in political discourse.” It’s
not just that Bernie Sanders is championing the cause; during a
recent Republican presidential debate, the first question to
candidates was whether they supported the increase. The Fight for $15
has become the rare labor fight that is too big to ignore.
Still, for
workers like Woolridge, a $15 minimum wage remains a bold thought
experiment. Certain cities have adopted the $15 standard, but their
rollouts have tended to be gradual: Seattle’s minimum wage for
large employers will reach $15 in 2017, Los Angeles’s in 2020. Yet
if we walked one block west of this McDonald’s in Oakland, we would
enter the city of Emeryville, where, last July, the minimum wage for
many workers jumped to $14.44 overnight. And now that Emeryville
boasts the highest citywide minimum wage in the country—one that
approaches and will eventually surpass $15 an hour—it has become a
testing ground of sorts. When workers at the bottom of the economy
suddenly receive a significant bump in pay, what changes? What
doesn’t?
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