“Florida’s $15 Minimum Wage Vote Might Be a Tipping Point,” Bloomberg News 11/’20

“In Florida, 51.2% of the electorate voted for Trump and 61% approved raising the state’s $8.56 an hour minimum wage in increments, until it hits $15 in 2026. It ‘just goes to show that minimum wages are something that even the most conservative and most liberal voters in the country value,’ “

Living Wage Movement

From the beginning, our brands Shoe Shine Wine, and now Solidarity Wines,  have proudly been publicly dedicated to supporting the Living Wage movement, and those fighting to end an exploitative economic system which grows more obscene each year.

Despite our nation's resources, 45 - 60 million people(1) now live in poverty/ low-income working families in the U.S.
That's nearly 1 in 5.

Here in California (the 5th largest economy in the world), the Public Policy Institute of California estimates that in 2016:
"About four in ten Californians are living in or near poverty."

Please see an interactive child poverty map of California, from Public Policy Institute of California

Tens of millions of our neighbors are working full time in arduous jobs, doing the work that Americans require and are asking a human being to do. For that life, the workers live in poverty and suffer indignities from society.

Simply: large corporations, who require the most low-wage employees to generate their enormous profits, are recording record profits, storing record amounts of cash off-shore without paying taxes, while too many of their employees live at/ near poverty, and taxpayers pay the estimated $150 Billion/ year for these employees to receive social services to survive.

Brookings estimates that “just over a quarter of low-wage workers receive some sort of public assistance in the form of Social Security Income, public assistance income, SNAP (food stamps), or Medicaid” (Realism about Reskilling, 12’19)

See University of California at Berkeley Labor Center's The High Public Cost of Low Wages. which estimates over $150 Billion in subsidies each year needed by working families,

Q: Why should taxpayers pay the costs of social services for these workers to keep them above poverty, and not the owners of the companies receiving the profits from their labor (and avoiding taxes while stashing cash off-shore)?

Organizing

The living wage movement has been leading the way in restoring work-with-dignity. Grassroots campaigns have won living wage ordinances in more than 130 cities and have helped lead the discussion in winning recent city & state increases (voter initiatives) in minimum wage rates across the country, and supporting the Fight for $15 campaigns nationwide.

It has been nearly 10 years since the last federal minimum wage increase by Congress, and for an unfathomable 50 years, the value of the minimum wage has declined (see above). The decades' old "poverty wage" rates used by the government to shape public policy are deliberately kept way too low and utterly outdated, and a real-time local "Living Wage" is the only true wage to lift families out of poverty. The evidence is clear: workers earning even the proposed $10 wage rates often depend on public assistance to make ends meet, while their employers transparently cheat our country out of $ Billions in taxes (off shore loopholes) while earning record profits, often in the $ Billions for big box retailers.

The most profitable corporations in the world, and its richest people, have "outsourced" real wages to middle-class taxpayers -- whether you are their customers, or not.

See Washington Post 8/'18: "Thousands of Amazon workers receive food stamps”

See Economic Rountable’s “Too Big to Govern”

We do not accept an economic or political system which perpetuates a false notion of scarcity, encourages a race to the bottom and poverty wages, and a massive transparent wealth transfer from the poorest to the super rich. We are committed to changing the values and false mythologies which enable this injustice.

We hope you will Join Us and all Living Wage allies, and Yes, enjoy some beautiful wine along the way... Let's celebrate the passion and commitment of those fighting to restore dignity to working America.

For more information on the Living Wage movement, and other vital Social and Economic Justice efforts in the Bay Area, please explore, show support through social media,  and join us in supporting:

SF Living Wage Coalition
Jobs with Justice SF
EBASE: East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Economies
Jobs with Justice North Bay

When workers risk everything and take a stand to protect themselves, Please support their efforts. 
Making an effort to support makes all the difference in the world. Cheers and Best to All, E

(1) US Census Bureau