Minimum wage

It is only fitting that the low point of the American labor movement occurred in 2009, the Year of the Rat. The Great Recession may have started with Wall Street speculation in the housing market, but your average American had most likely never heard of Henry Lehman or his siblings until the day Dick Fuld drove the 150-year-old bank bearing their name into the ditch. But General Motors, Chrysler? Cars, even more than Hollywood, jazz and the semi-automatic rifle, are the quintessential American business. How could those get driven into the ground? As soon as freshly evicted homeowners finished packing the remains of their subprime split-levels into the backseats of their battered Tahoes, they went looking for culprits. They settled on the United Auto Workers.

The fight for a $15 minimum wage started in 2012 with a bang. Hundreds of Walmart, port, and fast food workers walked off their jobs in protest of low wages. An organization called Fight for $15 formed in 2014 following two national strikes by laborers. Seattle became the first city to require a $15 minimum wage that same year. The White House issued an executive order that required new federal contracts to include a $10.10 minimum wage because legislation had stalled in Congress. The stalled federal push led to more state and local action. California and New York put together slow-rising $15 minimum wage laws in 2016 and 2017. Eight other states, mostly in New England, followed with plans to reach a $15 minimum wage by 2026 at the latest.