15 Now Roanoke was formed by a small number of childcare, restaurant and other workers in Roanoke in January of 2015, as an independent chapter of the Seattle-based movement, 15 Now. As underpaid and exploited workers, we were inspired by that movement and Seattle’s first Socialist City Councilperson, Kshama Sawant, who worked to help Seattle become the first city in the U.S. to raise minimum wage for all workers to $15/hr in 2014, and wanted to do the same: fight for living wages for all workers in Roanoke and ultimately Virginia.
Research
Though the cost of living here is no doubt cheaper than Seattle, it’s not cheap enough to survive on minimum wage ($7.25/hr, which is about $955/month) or even a few dollars above it. So we started off just doing some research on wages, inflation, productivity and profit growth across the country in the past half-century. The idea was to look at the facts ourselves to see if a case for raising minimum wage to $15/hr could be made based on just math and logic, then present it in a digestible way (via infographics) to highlight what workers today should be getting and demanding and fighting for at minimum. What we found was fairly mind-blowing:
1. Almost 50 years ago, the lowest-paid worker in the U.S. made $10.75/hr. That’s $3.50/hr MORE THAN the lowest-paid worker today!
(Federal minimum wage in 1968 was $1.60/hr; adjusted to inflation in 2015 is $10.75/hr)
2. The last time minimum wage was raised was 2009.
(It was raised from $6.55 to $7.25/hr.)
3. Minimum wage in the U.S. should currently be at least $21.56/hr. It, and wages in general, have not increased with productivity growth or profit growth – that is workers have more than doubled profits for companies in the U.S., and the C.E.O.s, owners and shareholders have hoarded that.
(U.S. labor productivity has increased by 135%, and per capita income growth has increased by 100.6% since 1968)
4. Over 2 million Virginians out of 8 million (many with college degrees) are in or near poverty.
Reaching Out, Educating & Agitating
In the Spring of 2015 we wrote a petition to the Virginia State Legislature (Delegates, Senators & Governor) to raise VA’s minimum wage to $15/hr, which we used as a conversation starter to connect with more workers and build a contact list, and collected hundreds of signatures. We connected with Raise Up For $15 (the southern branch of the national campaign to raise the federal minimum wage, Fight For $15) and showed solidarity with a McDonald’s workers’ strike and march in Richmond. We started holding meetings, discussing goals and strategies, and wrote a couple letters to the editor which were printed in The Roanoke Times:
“Wage Suppression Is Bad Business”
“Low Wages Unfair To Taxpayers”
Lobbying Our Officials
In the Summer and Fall of 2015 we canvassed at local events like Juneteenth to share our infographics and raise consciousness, as well as dove into the electoral route of lobbying our elected officials. We went to two Roanoke City Council meetings and gave testimonials as workers and advocated for them to pass a resolution that recommends raising VA’s minimum wage to the State Legislature. We also met with our state representatives in July to push for their action: Roanoke’s Delegate Sam Rasoul said he supported raising it, and Salem’s Delegate Greg Habeeb did not at all. *Roanoke State Senator John Edwards wouldn’t meet with us*. We entered the Labor Day Parade and brought some class consciousness to it. After continued pressure from us and the pressure of the upcoming election in November we were able to get both Delegate Rasoul and Senator Edwards to agree to write bills to raise VA’s minimum wage. However, neither bill was strong (Rasoul’s proposed raising it to $11.84/hr by 2018, and Edwards’ was even less: $10.10/hr). We also hosted our first “Workers’ Rally” on the steps of Roanoke City Hall as part of a national call for a $15/hr living wage.
In the winter of 2016, we were shown how little the officials in our state legislature “care” about workers and ending poverty. Neither Rasoul’s nor Edwards’ minimum wage bills had co-sponsors and all the bills put forth (including some others’) were killed in the Labor Committee, not even making it out to be voted on. We found out who voted to kill the bills in the committee and made that known to the public. While we didn’t win any material gains from these efforts in 2015 (petitioning, meeting with our representatives, getting them to write a bill), this was a valuable learning experience about the ineffectiveness of trying to simply appeal to our officials’ morality and hope they’ll get us what we need.
