How a tiny airport town near Seattle led the new movement against low wages (xpost frm LM)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/22/how-a-tiny-airport-town-near-seattle-led-the-new-movement-against-low-wages/



How a tiny airport town near Seattle led the new movement against low wages
By The Observer
Saturday, February 22, 2014 19:44 EST

Until the turn of the year, few Americans had much reason to have heard of SeaTac, a small community just outside Seattle. Those aware of the town’s existence knew it as a place that exists to serve the city’s bustling Seattle–Tacoma international airport. But SeaTac is now firmly on the map.

Recent events there have shone a light on the increasingly febrile, high-energy politics of low pay. And they also tell us something about how paralysis in Washington DC is prompting more states, cities and communities to act to improve their prospects.

The issue of chronic low pay has been thrust into the spotlight over the last year by Barack Obama, whose proposal for a hike in the federal hourly minimum wage — from $7.25 to $10.10 — would mean a direct pay rise for more than 16 million workers, with another eight million indirectly benefiting. By any standard that would represent a major increase, but it would still only restore the federal minimum wage to just above the level it attained 45 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. It is a proposal that appears, however, very unlikely to get passed by Congress any time soon. For now, low-paid workers will have to look elsewhere for a pay rise.

A generation ago SeaTac was what Americans would call a middle-class town. A jet-fueler or baggage handler could earn a decent living. Those days are gone. These and many other jobs are now paid far less – either at, or just over, the local minimum wage. As David Rolf, the influential vice-president of the Service Employees International Union, and a guiding hand behind events at SeaTac relates: “It’s gone from being comfortable to a poor town, even in a prosperous corner of the US. This story of a whole community being shut out of prosperity is a microcosm of what’s been happening across America.”