Posts Tagged: Minimum Wage

Workers at Conflict Kitchen in Pittsburgh stood together and signed authorization cards to have a union voice on the job and join UFCW Local 23.

Conflict Kitchen is a counter-service restaurant in downtown owned by Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU).  It is an art project/restaurant that serves cuisine from a country that is currently going through some kind of conflict with the U.S.

Because an overwhelming majority of workers supported joining a union, CMU recognized the unit and agreed to meet at the bargaining table without a separate election.

“We are thrilled to be organizing. We think it is important to use our visibility to help the fight for other service workers,” said Conflict Kitchen employee Quinton Steele. The group was inspired by the victory of New York City fast-food workers to earn $15 an hour.

Steele also said that workers at the restaurant started the process to form a union just weeks before and that they were elated to see it come to fruition in such a short period of time.

The week, The New York Times featured a study that “suggests that unions may also help children move up the economic ladder.” The paper, written by researchers at Harvard, Wellesley and the Center for American Progress, essentially finds that children born into low-income families have a greater chance of ascending “to higher incomes in metropolitan areas where union membership is higher.”

Beyond the beneficial impact that being part of a union has on parents’ wages, the researchers found that this trend is also attributed to the fact that “unions are effective at pushing the political system to deliver policies — like a higher minimum wage and greater spending on schools and other government programs — that broadly benefit workers.” Perhaps the best and most recent examples of this are seen in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, where the minimum wage has been raised significantly.

The study also found that “children with fathers who belong to a union have significantly higher wages than children who don’t. But when it’s the mother who belongs to a union, only the wages of daughters rise.”

When trying to determine why, the Times notes that “it’s possible that the explanation is sociological: Daughters with a mother who belongs to a union may be more likely to work themselves, which means they’re more likely to have higher wages. Or, put differently, union membership is helping to change social norms.”