On election night, 82% of voters in Tukwila approved a $3/hour raise to the city’s minimum wage. It’s an absolute landslide victory.
Workers are once again showing what happens when we come together to demand change: we win big. In 2013 & 2014, we passed first-ever $15 laws in SeaTac and Seattle. We won the fight for a significant boost to the statewide minimum wage in 2016. And now, thousands of workers in Tukwila are getting a raise.
It wasn’t even close. Help celebrate this big raise for Tukwila workers by sharing the news on Twitter and Facebook!
Back in 2013, when fast food strikers organizing with Working Washington sparked the Fight for 15, we faced massive opposition from giant corporations and big business lobbyists. They claimed it was somehow unrealistic for people to be able to afford food, somehow disastrous for the economy for more people to have more money to spend at more businesses, and somehow unpopular to ensure people can pay rent.
Of course, you know what happened next: we won $15 in SeaTac and Seattle and SeaTac, despite their doomsday threats.
Nearly a decade later, the landslide victory in Tukwila is proof of just how completely we’ve transformed the conversation around raising wages. As Katie Wilson—General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, which led the Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign—writes in The Stranger:
“This landslide victory should serve as a wake up call for elected officials around King County: The statewide minimum wage is way too low for our increasingly high-cost region, and voters overwhelmingly support raising the floor.”
Our movement is picking up momentum—both here at home and across the country. Here’s what else workers won this election season:
All of our endorsed candidates for the WA state legislature are leading their races! These legislators will head to Olympia and put workers’ needs before the wishlists of the wealthy.
Workers in Nebraska won a statewide $15/hour minimum wage. The current Nebraska minimum wage is just $9.
Service industry workers in Washington, D.C. won an end to the tipped minimum wage, ensuring customer tips are truly on top of pay.
And workers in Illinois passed a law preventing anti-union “right to work” laws, strengthening collective bargaining rights statewide.
There’s more where that came from. Watch this space!