Decompiling Oppression #121
Sam McVeety
There's been a lot of commotion in the Seattle City Council lately about minimum wages, and with another Labor Day upon us, I wanted to take the time to look at what's happening both locally and nationally. I haven't forgotten the door I knocked in the City of SeaTac while campaigning for a city council member, where I was told flat out that if wages were too low, people should just work multiple jobs. Across the country, there's a wide spectrum of tactics and impact, from municipalities with strong local support for livable wages to entire states that default to the federal minimum ($7.25/hour, unchanged since 2009) and restrict cities and counties from enacting higher standards.
In Seattle specifically, Council President Nelson made an attempt earlier this year to scale back the PayUp legislation that targets wage protection for gig economy workers. Passed in 2022, this legislation set a minimum compensation for these workers, one that was promptly passed on to service users by companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash in the name of preserving their bottom line.
More recently, Councilmember Hollingsworth proposed an extension of lower wage standards for tipped workers. The mechanics of this are somewhat subtle: small employers could pay their workers a lower minimum, as long as they paid some additional amount (the "credit") into other kinds of benefits. (Of course, this is just a long way of saying that their total compensation had a lower minimum.) While the framing here was different from PayUp (it pits small business owners against their workers, rather than giant corporations), the effect is the same: lower wage standards in a city with a cost of living far exceeding those minimums.
While these efforts have stalled (largely due to persistent mobilization from organized labor and advocates), it's disheartening to see repeated attempts to weaken protections for those who are already earning the least. We are seemingly caught in a cycle of neglect. Each time, it starts with a class being deliberately carved out of standard labor protections (whether that is domestic and farm workers in the New Deal, or gig workers more recently). Each time, we have to collectively learn (and subsequently legislate, all over again) the reality that minimum labor standards matter, whether those concern wages, working conditions, or otherwise.
One thing that might be taken for granted in Washington State is the ability to have these debates and enact protections at the local level, whether through elected officials or by popular vote (as with SeaTac Proposition 1 and its living wage). In many states, however, the use of preemption legislation is very much in vogue. Preemption legislation operates at the state level, barring local jurisdictions from enacting additional measures (like a local minimum wage or paid sick leave).
Tellingly, the use of preemption has its roots in upholding white supremacy, as a post-Reconstruction South sought to limit the power of local jurisdictions:
Fearful that their large Black populations might wield political power to restructure taxes, some Southern states enacted supermajority requirements for revenue changes, starting with Mississippi in 1890 ... The South was also home to the first modern sales tax, adopted by Mississippi in 1932.
By preventing municipalities from enacting progressive taxation schemes, states retained the power to dictate policy through budgets, coercing regressive tax codes into being. Also worth mentioning: in 1953, the federal government enabled the parallel elimination of jurisdiction of Native Nations in certain states through Public Law 280. The hypocrisy here is brazen; these same (particularly Southern) jurisdictions are apt to claim local control and states' rights as their mantle, while affording no such autonomy to smaller jurisdictions within their borders.
In the large scheme of things, preemption isn't necessarily a bad thing; it all depends on how it is interacting with systems of power. Passing statewide (or national) legislation to create a set of baseline minimum protections (as in the Voting Rights Act or Civil Rights Act) is very different from using it to eliminate or suppress labor protections, which instead is pushing (a low) maximum protection for vulnerable populations.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: If you earned the federal minimum wage, how many hours a week would you have to work to match your current income level?
Communal: How can we celebrate the importance of all kinds of labor (including unpaid), rather than create hierarchies of value?
Solidarity: Support Working Washington, as a statewide workers organization that fights to raise wages, improve labor standards, and change the conversation about wealth, inequality, and the value of work.
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