At our February Membership Meeting, TRU members voted to get involved in the fight for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. Want to help? You can sign up here, or email @transitriders.org. Why “Transit Riders for 15“? Here’s the Resolution in part:
- The Transit Riders Union mission statement declares that we are an “organization of working and poor people”;
- A substantial portion of the transit riding public in Seattle are workers who make less than $15/hour;
- The struggle for a $15 minimum wage is arguably the most significant, high-profile movement of working and poor people that Seattle has seen in decades, and its victory will likely have immense consequences in the rest of the United States, and beyond;
- The cutting of transit service is not an isolated phenomenon, but part and parcel of a larger program of austerity, perpetrated by the financial and corporate elite in order to loot and/or privatize public services, and to externalize the costs onto working and poor people. The general effect of this program on working and poor people has been a stagnation and decline in the standard of living, and the winning of a $15 minimum wage would constitute a major victory for working and poor people against this decades-long onslaught;
- We are now offered the opportunity to strengthen our message to riders regarding bus cuts by tying it in with minimum wage; to register working and poor people to vote, and encourage them to get politically engaged, and thereby to change the composition of the electorate to make it more favorable public transit.
- Therefore be it resolved: that the TRU establish Transit Riders For 15 () as a committee of the TRU with the following mission: we will educate, mobilize, and organize transit riders and working and poor people to fight for and win $15/hour minimum wage in the city of Seattle.