Voters in States and Cities Get It: Workers Deserve a Living Wage

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we're excited to have you because you have some good news to share, which is the theme of We Can Do Better a little bit.

And that, so under, on the national stage, under this administration and this Congress, but, but as you can attest under previous administrations and previous Congresses, uh, workers haven't been making many gains.

But that's not true at the state and local level, including here in twenty twenty-six.

Co- so can you share a little bit of the, the good news and the progress that's been happening across the country, just not at the federal level?

Yeah.

Well, the, the progress, the thing that we can celebrate is all the action that has happened to raise state and local minimum wages, and this is a trend that has been building, uh, for more than a decade now.

We had just this past year, on January first, over eight million workers got a raise because of state level minimum wage increases that took effect on January first.

There were nineteen states that raised their minimum wages on January first.

And then this past July, uh, there was another, uh, two states, Oregon and Alaska, that raised their minimum wage.

The District of Columbia raised its minimum wage.

And then you also had fourteen local jurisdictions across the country that have set higher minimum wages for their localities.

So these are city or county level minimum wages.

And all told, that was another three hundred and sixty thousand workers that got a raise as a result of those increases in July.

So, you know, as you alluded to, there's a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the current state of our economy for working people.

But because of the actions of lots of advocates and, uh, and smart lawmakers across the country over the last several, uh, over the last several years, we've put in place policies to lift pay for the lowest paid workers in, in many states, in most states across the country.

Notably, not all, but in many states, uh, low-wage workers are earning more than they would have otherwise.

And in many of the states, those are places that have, states have gone red, or at least they've, they voted for...

I know that sometimes there's actually been referenda that increase the minimum wage while fo- while the majority voted for Republican candidates.

So you mentioned the advocates, and that's when I know who you work with and, and, and focus in your work with EARN.

You know, what, what does work? What, what, what are the effective messages and campaign approaches that, that do cause the legislators and, and actually voters to support minimum wage increases?

Well, well, the truth is the majority of the public supports raising the minimum wage.

It's really only Republican lawmakers in office who tend to be opposed to it.

You mentioned that minimum wages have been raised even in red states.