The people of Seattle have spoken and their government has listened. The minimum wage in Seattle has just been raised to $15/hr, making it the highest in the country. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray had officially proposed the increase and is expected to sign the ordinance within the next day or so. Washington already has the highest minimum wage in the country at $9.32, so the approval is not as surprising as it would have been if passed in another part of the U.S.
The minimum wage increase will be introduced gradually. Large business will be expected to switch to the $15/hr rate by 2017. By 2021 all business in Seattle will be paying employees the new minimum wage. The first increase will begin on April 1, 2015 when the minimum wage will hover around $10 to $11 an hour depending on the scale of the business. 15 For Seattle, a minimum wage advocacy group, expects that up 100,000 workers will benefit from the new minimum wage.
Mayor Murray proposed the plan as a middle ground between those who demanded an immediate wage hike and worried business owners afraid they could not afford a raised minimum wage. The official proposal came out of a committee appointed by Murray who elected both business and labor leaders. Of course you can’t please everyone. Some feel that there is too much time between now and when business are obligated to raise their wages. Small business owners that have second and third locations are upset because under the new wage increase they will be classified as larger businesses, and will have to adhere to the increase sooner than later.
Recently there had been a push for a national minimum wage of $10.10, though the proposition never gathered any real steam. It is hard to see a future in which the minimum wage will ever be raised on a national level. Democrats and Republicans now make it a point to object to and block any proposal their counterparts might make. Minimum wage may need to just stay a state issue for any real results to be seen. States such as California and Washington already pay their workers a minimum wage far above the national average. Seattle has just proven that politics do not have to get in the way of people making a decent wage. Maybe the politicians in D.C. can take note, though that will most likely never happen.
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