Nicole Stroup, a nine-year Aramark employee who works on the Portland State University campus, lost her home and is living in her car. She tears up when explaining that her two kids—a 10-year-old daugher and a 3-year-old son—are living with relatives, separated from each other and their mom.
“They cut my hours in November and I couldn’t afford our rent,” Stroup says. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when they cut our hours more after school lets out for the summer.”
Stroup was among at least 300 activists who marched through downtown Portland on Wednesday, demanding an end to “poverty wages” and advocating for a statewide $15 minimum wage.
“The latest polls in Oregon show 54 percent favor a $15 minimum wage,” says Justin Norton-Kerston. “This event is part of a larger rally involving 200 cities and 40 countries; we’re really moving and spreading out.
Norton-Kerston is an organizer with 15 Now PDX, a group that announced that on Friday they plan to file a state ballot measure that would increase Oregon’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2019. The group wants the measure added to the November 2016 ballot.
“Now we’re figuring out how we’re going to fund it,” Norton-Kerston said. “Usually there are big labor unions to help with funding, it’s just a matter of finding out if they support the ballot measure or not, and we’re receiving indications they do.”
Judging from the hordes of protestors sporting shirts from SEIU Local 49—a union representing 10,000 Oregon and Washington workers—at least one union supports the initiative.
Marchers started in O’Bryant Square, then swarmed the lobby of the Pittock Block at SW 9th Ave. and Washington St. Owners of the building earlier this year laid off all unionized cleaning staff and replaced them with low-wage, non-union workers.
“This is the only building in Portland’s Central Business District that’s larger than 75,000 square feet that’s switched to non-union workers,” said Maggie Long with SEIU Local 49.
From there, the huge group wove its way through streets and right up to City Hall. Mayor Charlie Hales in January made the news after announcing his plan to raise city employees’ wages to $15 per hour, but he’s taken heat for only including full time workers in that plan.
“Indeed my paycheck comes from the city, but I have to turn to the state and federal government for food stamps,” says Sarah Kowalski, a seasonal employee with Portland Parks and Recreation. “Mayor Hales promised to increase wages, but flip-flopped. I guess he didn’t mean everyone.”
“”Now we’re figuring out how we’re going to fund it,” Norton-Kerston said.” — They … can’t be this stupid, can they???
If 15 can be so great for everyone, while at the same time not causing a sudden leap in inflation to compensate for it, then why the hell not make it 50?
We will all be rich, along with the pimple faced fry cook teenager that I used to be.
You two stupid, heartless fucks must not have young children. If you did, you’d know the thought of young children being separated from their mother and each other because after nine years of service she still can’t make rent is unbearable and unacceptable.
@worthless assholes – It’s terrible a situation, and it’s a great argument for suggesting that we help HER. But her personal situation is not an argument for changing things in the whole state, for everyone. You can’t extrapolate from one data point like that.
I think there are good arguments for $15/hr, but that’s not one of them – that’s just a hook for your emotions.
I just think it’s an incomplete fix without a check on inflation to match the increase. Going to the movies used to cost a nickel, the cost of the first production model Corvettes in 1953 was $3490 (thanks Wikipedia), and so on, and so on. To me inflation is a game played with numbers to trick younger generations into thinking they are doing better than their parents were. “My pops only made $25,000 a year at the steel plant but I make $65k as a web designer”… but the purchasing power of his money was twice what yours is. It says exactly what it is: a new $15/ hr minimum wage. You will have to have it to afford the steadily increasing local rents and barely scrape by as the costs of food and services steadily rise as well. Look at someplace like San Francisco, the sky is the limit. You can pay somebody $30/ hr if you like but if rent on a one bedroom apartment is $2500 a month and simple items like a sandwich at a deli cost $15-20 suddenly you are right back where you started. Right now real minimum wage to not have to share a house and to have regular utilities and eat comfortably with a small entertainment and savings budget is probably $45,000 a year before taxes (take home about $35k) and that works out to roughly $22.50/ hr for 2000 hrs of work in a year (50 weeks @ 40 hours). In another 100 years everybody can be a millionaire if that’s what it takes to make them feel important.
$15 an hour in the city of Portland makes perfect sense. That would bring it into line with the minimum wage in many major American cities about 25 years ago (back then it was around $9 or $10 in DC or LA – that’s the change in the value of the dollar). But statewide? That’s stupid. $15 an hour is about $30k a year for a full time job; and that would be more than many employers in, say, Medford, or Fossil, could handle. It needs to be done by city, or maybe by county.
Of course, even $15 an hour isn’t going to save people who decide to have kids even though they can’t support themSELVES or make other bad choices. The sob stories are sad and we should feed our poor, but if you make foolish life choices, you don’t get the big house on the hill (or even any house close in to PDX). There has to be SOME incentive to not make terrible decisions.