minimum wage
August 2, 2019 -
Responding to the Fight for $15 movement, the U.S. House recently voted to raise the federal minimum wage, and a number of states have also raised minimum wages. But progress at the local level has been blocked in some places by state laws preempting such wage hikes — and now labor advocates are taking aim at those laws.
July 19, 2019 -
This week the Democratic-controlled U.S. House passed the Raise the Wage Act to gradually increase the hourly minimum wage to $15. The proposal now awaits action in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the bill sits in a committee chaired by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, who thinks there should be no minimum wage laws at all.
May 24, 2019 -
Just days after McDonald's workers filed over two dozen sexual harassment charges and lawsuits against the fast-food giant, they went on strike in cities across the the South and nation to demand a redress of their grievances.
May 3, 2019 -
After voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring the franchise to people with felony convictions, Florida lawmakers are trying to make it harder for citizens to put amendments on the ballot. Legislators in Arkansas, the only other Southern state that allows citizen-initiated amendments, did likewise after voters passed a minimum-wage hike.
November 13, 2018 -
They ended racist Jim Crow-era policies in two states and raised the minimum wage in another. But elsewhere, Southern voters embraced racially discriminatory voter ID laws and took steps to restrict reproductive rights. The ballot measures that passed this year reflect a politically divided region.
October 26, 2018 -
Voters in Southern states are weighing in on ballot measures to expand voting rights, raise the minimum wage, and protect the environment.
September 26, 2018 -
After former Confederate states drafted progressive constitutions that allowed black men to hold office for the first time, there was violent resistance to black power at the local level. During the Jim Crow era, legislatures rewrote those constitutions to give themselves broad power to override local governments.
