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Seattle mayor wants $15/hour city minimum wage

Posted by Olog-hai on Thu Apr 24 19:50:07 2014

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Seattle Mayor set to announce $15 minimum wage plan

By Essex Porter
Updated: 2:39 p.m. Thursday, April 24, 2014 | Posted: 8:34 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to announce a plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Murray made the decision after the Income Inequality Committee he appointed missed Wednesday's deadline for reaching a consensus on a plan.

“There has not at this point been a final agreement, there have been a lot of good talks, people coming closer together,” said committee member and Seattle City Council member Nick Licata.

Committee members representing business and labor could not agree on issues like crediting tips and benefits against the $15 minimum. And council member Kshama Sawant revealed another hurdle — she said there has been little talk of automatically increasing the minimum wage with inflation.

“If going forward the new minimum wage does not have a cost of living increase attached to it every year of the phase in it's not going to work out, Sawant said.

The statewide minimum wage does rise automatically with inflation.

But Thursday morning, committee co-chair Howard Wright told KIRO 7's John Knicely that the group planned to have its proposal to the mayor by noon. The mayor's news conference was scheduled for 1:15 p.m., but was later pushed back to 3 p.m. On Thursday afternoon, Wright said the committee was still working on an agreement for the recommendation.

Wright said his understanding is if the committee has a recommendation ready before the news conference, the mayor will present that instead of his own.

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