Reports show CEO of Costco, Craig Jelinek, says the company is raising the starting hourly wage at $16.
What We Know:
- The fight to raise the minimum wage to $15, also affiliated with tag #Fightfor15 on Twitter, has been gaining a lot of traction this week. Corporations have been making an effort to increase their starting hourly wage due to pressure from state regulation and brewing discussions from political figures. According to a report done by NBC, Jelinek said the company has always been about providing competitive salaries and affordable health care to its employees during a senate budget committee.
- Jelinek stated that Costco would be raising its hourly rates to $16 starting next week. Two years prior to this announcement, Costco raised their hourly rate to $15 showing that the company is progressive in raising wages for its employees. According to Jelinek, more than half of Costco’s U.S employees earn hourly wages of more than $25.
- Raising the minimum wage is gaining support from several politicians. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., seems to be a major supporter of increasing the hourly rate for minimum wage. She sent out a tweet criticizing Republican Colleagues Mitt Roney, R-Utah, and Tom Cotton, R-ARK, for only raising the minimum wage to $10. Ocasio-Cortez says that $10 is not enough and will still have many Americans living in poverty.
When members of Congress fight to set the minimum wage below a living wage, they are playing a role in creating and preserving poverty in the United States.
The $15/hr proposal with multi-year phase in is already a deep compromise.
$10 an hour is legislated poverty. https://t.co/uMlzZJt8yb
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 23, 2021
- Other politicians opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 statewide, are filing proposals that would only allow individual citizens to benefit from the wage increase. In Florida, voters have flooded the polls to approve a constitutional amendment that will raise Florida’s minimum wage. According to News4Jax.com, Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg has filed a proposal that would allow the legislature to provide exemptions to those who would otherwise qualify for an increase in the hourly minimum wage. Those exemptions would affect workers under the age of 21, state prisoners, and workers convicted of any felonies.
Despite the great news for Costco employees, the fight to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 was not approved in Joe Biden’s COVID relief proposal.
