Workers and advocates celebrated this week as Winston-Salem City Council members voted unanimously to approve a minimum wage of $15 an hour or more for city workers by 2021. The move shows growing momentum in North Carolina, following similar victories in Greensboro, Raleigh, Durham and Wake County.
On May 22nd, the Raising Wages NC coalition is hosting a statewide lobby day to put our elected officials on notice that the time is now for state lawmakers to raise the minimum wage for North Carolina’s working families to $15 an hour.
“North Carolina’s refusal to increase its minimum wage is beginning to look as heartless and thoughtless as its refusal to expand Medicaid,” says The News & Observer in an editorial that rejects as unfounded the canard that raising the wage will hurt businesses or employment and says keeping it at $7.25 “doesn’t improve the state’s economy and only protects jobs barely worth having.”
“Even the rationales for stifling minimum wages in North Carolina contradict themselves,” says the newspaper for North Carolina’s third largest city.
North Carolina State Representative Chaz Beasley knows a thing or two about why raising wages is so important to working families like the one he grew up in.
In recognition of International Women’s Day, state lawmakers joined Raising Wages NC to kickoff a new campaign and to introduce legislation for $15 an hour by 2022.
North Carolina working people and families need a raise. Too many workers in our state don’t get paid enough to afford the basics. That’s why we’ve joined a broad coalition to campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in five years.
Fresh off major victories in California, New York, and Pennsylvania, the Fight for $15 and union rights has announced that April 14th will be its biggest mobilization ever.
Service sector workers aren’t the only ones organizing to raise wages. This week the Raleigh Police officers, among the lowest paid in the country, launched a campaign for a raise of their own.
Raising wages and expanding opportunity for the masses – not the millionaires – is the way forward to a prosperous future for both working people and the economy in North Carolina.
Chapel Hill resident, ardent AFL-CIO supporter and grandma, Miriam Thompson, wrote an excellent op-ed for the News & Observer, in which she asks a question that used to be the cornerstone of the American social contract, “How can we build a better future for my children and grandchildren – and yours?
The more low-wage workers hear about the Fight for $15, the better, which makes the nationwide day of action on November 10 more important than ever.
The Fight for $15 and a union will convene a forum at the state legislature on October 7th to take testimony from workers and supporters and to call for the creation of a “People’s Wage Board” to advocate for raising wages in North Carolina.
Supporters of raising wages, led by AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, scored a big win in the City of Greensboro this week when city council members voted to increase the minimum wage for city workers.
