A new coalition of more than two dozen groups will campaign to raise Oregon’s minimum wage to $13.50 statewide — and restore the right of local communities to pass higher local minimum wages. The Raise the Wage Oregon campaign will push for legislation in the February 2016 session of the Oregon Legislature, but if lawmakers fail to act, coalition leaders say they will work to take a ballot measure to voters in November 2016.
Labor groups in the coalition include the Oregon AFL-CIO, SEIU, Oregon Education Association, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, AFSCME, and the Oregon Nurses Association. Other groups include Causa, Family Forward Oregon, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, Basic Rights Oregon, Oregon Bus Project, Urban League of Portland, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.
“No one who works full time should live in poverty,” said Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain at the coalition’s July 22 campaign launch. The event took place at Firefighters Memorial Park in Portland— across the street from the McDonalds restaurant at West Burnside and 18th Avenue. “We want to raise the wage to $13.50 for all Oregonians, and restore cities’ power to pass a higher minimum wage, so cities like Portland, Salem, and Eugene can follow the lead of Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” Chamberlain said. All three of the latter cities have approved local ordinances to raise the minimum wage over time to $15 an hour, but Oregon’s legislature passed a law in 2001 barring local jurisdictions from passing higher local minimum wages. Oregon’s minimum is currently $9.25 an hour.
Raise the Wage Oregon takes up where a substantially similar coalition, Fair Shot Oregon, left off. Raising the minimum wage was one of five proposals Fair Shot Oregon took to the Oregon Legislature in the session that ran from February to early July 2015. The other four pieces of legislation passed — dealing with paid sick leave, retirement savings, ban the box, and racial profiling. Raising the minimum wage was the one big exception to the progress made in 2015, Chamberlain said.
To pledge support and stay updated on the campaign, backers can sign up online at raisethewageoregon.org. The campaign will also hit the streets of Portland, Eugene, Woodburn, Bend, Coos Bay, and Pendleton July 25, talking to local residents.
Meanwhile, a separate union-backed effort seeks to qualify a November 2016 ballot measure to raise the minimum to $15 an hour by 2019. That campaign turned in 1,808 valid signatures on June 30, and is now waiting for the Oregon attorney general to determine an official ballot title before heading out to raise another 86,376 signatures by July 2016.
A minimum wage of $13.50 is only adequate for a single person.
In the Portland metro area a living wage for a single adult is $11.25, and for one adult and one child it is $23.11. And that’s NOW, not into the future.
For one adult and one child in Baker County, it is $21.27. In Washington County it is $23.11. In Salem, it’s $22.14. In Medford, $22.50. In Bend, $22.29.
And, of course, more people in a family means more expenses.
The campaign for a higher minimum wage is urgent, but it has to be more realistic. People can’t live on the wages being considered.
Check out your own locale here: http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/41/locations
A raise to $13.50 is insufficient. People who once stood in front of the capital calling for a $15 minimum wage are now in parks calling for less.
There are times to compromise, and then there are times to take the real information regarding the inflation of everything compared to wages, so we can fight for a real number. From the last lost, $15 is nothing in comparison to the actual pay needed to survive in Oregon. These unions are selling the citizens who need the money to survive short with this action.
15 NOW Oregon took this cause up before the sessiom began, before fair shot co-opted the movement, and is the only number that will enhance our economy, give 400,000 (1/10) of our population a direct wage increase. This is about trickle up economics, where all of Oregon’s citizens have a chance to rise up.
Check out: 15noworegon.com