W Post: The AFL-CIO is on sound political ground to push for wage increases

[Omaha Steve]

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WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 08: U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (C), speaks while flanked by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), (R), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (L) during a news conference January 8, 2014 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-afl-cio-is-on-sound-political-ground-to-push-for-wage-increases/2015/01/07/0d89c92a-96ad-11e4-927a-4fa2638cd1b0_story.html

By Harold Meyerson Opinion writer January 8

Raising wages is the single standard by which leadership will be judged,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced Wednesday at the federation’s conference unveiling labor’s political agenda. To that end, he said, the AFL-CIO would launch projects this year in the four states that hold the first four presidential primaries and caucuses of 2016 — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — as a way to make presidential candidates spell out exactly what they would do to boost Americans’ increasingly anemic wages.

The focus on wages is hardly new to U.S. labor, of course. In 1996, Trumka’s predecessor as federation president, John Sweeney, co-authored a book with David Kusnet titled “America Needs a Raise.” Since Sweeney’s book appeared, however, the raise has all but disappeared from the lives of U.S. workers. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted in addressing the conference, the bottom 90 percent of Americans, who received 70 percent of the income growth between 1935 and 1980, have gotten precisely zero percent of the income growth since 1997.

The AFL-CIO is on sound ground politically, no less than economically, in making candidates’ positions on increasing wages the key to labor’s support. In November’s midterm elections, after all, voters in four solidly conservative states — Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota — overwhelmingly approved ballot measures increasing their respective state’s minimum wage.

Trumka also announced that the federation would initiate projects in seven cities that would organize workers — whether union members or not — in campaigns to boost wages and enact such pro-employee ordinances as mandating paid sick days or requiring retailers to give their workers sufficient advance notice of their hours. The cities range from such liberal bastions as Minneapolis and Washington, where legislation that pushes the envelope of workers’ rights can be enacted, to cities such as San Diego and Atlanta, where demographic change is creating the possibility of more progressive government, to Columbus, where creating an organization of low-wage workers could help keep Ohio in the Democratic column in the 2016 presidential election.

FULL story at link.

Harold Meyerson writes a weekly political column that appears on Thursdays and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. View Archive: http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/harold-meyerson