The D.C. Council agreed to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 on Tuesday. The voting was reportedly unanimous, as stated by the Washington Post. Fourteen states began the year with higher wages, and four other states have additional increases scheduled for 2016.
The $15 per hour minimum wage measure, which is called “Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2016” by petitioners and was not put on the ballot for voters in Washington D.C. The city council aims to raise the minimum wage to $15 by the year 2020, and this initiative was met with encouragement from supporters, who recently saw a wage increase from $10.50 to $11.50 in D.C.
This victory for the “Fight for $15” campaign is viewed by minimum wage workers and non-minimum wage workers as both positive and negative.
Alle Goldsmith, 19, is a student at D.C.’s American University who works at a coffee shop inside the campus; She believes that “it’s good and bad,” because “more people are gonna be able to afford all their lives’ necessities, but it will make the job market more competitive.” The journalism student makes $12.50 an hour, and she can safely state that “for students, it’s very beneficial,” since it ‘’makes it so you can work and study.”
What the D.C. Council decided still needs to be confirmed by a final vote, and it seemingly forestalled a November ballot measure, which would have raised the minimum wage to $15 for all workers, even waiters and such workers who receive tips.
Sue Anti, a D.C. resident, when asked whether she believes that the fight for a higher minimum wage will become a nation-wide trend, she responded by saying that “anything’s possible, but there is a lot of opposition to it, I don’t know that it will.” Although it may not affect her community, Anti agrees that “if people can afford a living by working then they will try harder to get jobs,” which would make the job market more competitive than it is now.
The D.C. Council’s proposal would increase wages for approximately 114,000 working people, which would be around 14 percent of all D.C. workers, as well as more than one-fifth of D.C. private-sector workers. When the minimum wage reaches $15, affected workers will earn roughly $2,900 more per year than they did before.
As stated in California’s “Fair Wage Act of 2016″, the sole purpose of the proposal is “to ensure that workers receive wages that will financially support them and their families,“ in order to improve the quality of life in across the United States.
Taking into account the possible repercussions of this decision, it will take “a lot of re-calibrating the budget,” as stated by Garrett Schlichte, an event coordinator at the American University. Given the high standard of living within Washington D.C. and the rising inflation within the nation, which went up 1 percent year-on-year in May of 2016, this change is one that Schlichte would “much rather figure out how to accommodate… than [any] other change.’