Minimum wage

Fast-food workers walk out during job, demand better pay

Bellamy Pailthorp — Fri, 31 May 2013 00:19:00 +0000

Workers at fast-food restaurants all over Seattle walked off the job Thursday and rallied outside, taking part in a national movement calling for better wages and the right to organize.

The workers walked out of Taco Bell in Ballard, Burger King in Lake City, Taco Del Mar in the U-District, and Arby’s in Georgetown. During the lunch hour on Broadway, dozens of workers and their supporters waved signs outside an empty Qdoba franchise, demanding a living wage of $15 per hour.

Why won't this McDonald's move 20 feet into lower-wage Idaho?

Jessica Robinson — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:00:20 +0000

The border between the states of Washington and Idaho is like a Petri dish for what the minimum wage does to the economy. That’s where two extremes meet.

Idaho has the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. While Washington’s is nearly $2 more, the highest in the nation. You might expect that wage gap to send Washington border businesses fleeing over to Idaho. But that's not what's happening.

Raising minimum wage: A help or harm?

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:37:55 +0000

Back in 1912, Massachusetts became the first place in America to introduce a minimum wage, but it would take another quarter century before a national minimum wage was set.

President Franklin Roosevelt made it law in 1938, that any hourly worker had to be paid at least 25 cents an hour. It was revolutionary, and very few countries had anything like it.

Every few years, the federal minimum wage would go up, helping millions of Americans inch closer to a middle-class lifestyle.

Minimum wage in Washington will rise to $9.04 in January

Austin Jenkins — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 03:11:43 +0000

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Despite a slow economic recovery, inflation is up. That means Washington’s minimum wage will increase to more than $9 an hour starting in January.

That was the announcement Friday from the state. The wage hike is based on a voter approved initiative that links the minimum wage to inflation.