Petition Drive Postponed

Yesterday, March 17, 2020, the 15 Now Tacoma Board of Directors (BOD) decided to postpone further gathering of signatures until at least the end of April because of the current pandemic. At the end of April, the BOD will decide how we will continue this campaign. It is possible we may delay any attempt to put Initiative 9 on the 2020 ballot and may go for a 2021 initiative instead.

We are concerned about the health of our volunteers as well as the health of petition signers. Health authorities tell us a person may be infected but show no signs of illness. Such people can pass on the COVID 19 to other, more vulnerable members of society.

We are very grateful to those who have supported Initiative 9 with their spirit and hard work. And we are grateful to everyone who signed our petition, spread the word, or in general worked for the betterment of working people. We have every reason to be proud of ourselves.

We’re not calling it quits. This is only a postponement. We will continue to maintain the website and continue trying to get endorsers for making the minimum wage to be a living wage. Hard times are ahead of us, but we must not allow ourselves to be defeated.

Please take care of yourselves, look after your loved ones and neighbors.

In solidarity,

15 Now Tacoma Board of Directors

Minutes of March 7, 2020 Meeting

You can read the minutes for March 7, 2020 below or download them by clicking here.

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Volunteer Meeting, 03/07/2020

VOLUNTEER ACTIVIST MEETING
15 Now Tacoma Meeting
Sat, March 7, 2020PM
Red Elm Cafe 1114 MLK Jr. Wy


DO YOU WANT to be part of the signature gathering effort to put Initiative 9 on Tacoma’s ballsot?  Can you live on your current wage? Does your boss treat you with enough respect to actually pay you a living wage?

Become a volunteer activist and join us in raising  the minimum wage to a living wage here in Tacoma. Hear about the progress we’ve made so far and what you can do to make this a reality. Work with this local collective of working-class Tacomans, low-wage workers, retired people, community activists, religious activists, labor activists, and friends fighting for a dignified minimum wage.

Please plan on attending

Are You Registered to Vote?

Here are some resources for you to make sure you’re registered to vote. You will likely need to update your information if you moved, changed your name, or for certain other reasons. Here is a link to the Pierce County Elections webpage with this information.

  • The nonpartisan Vote.Org website also has many useful tools. Check it out for lots of useful information.
  • You can check to see if you’re a Pierce County registered voter, register to vote online, or update your registration online by clicking here.
  • You can view the Initiative 9 in its entirety by clicking here.
  • You view, download, or print out the paper version of the Pierce County registration form below.

Here’s the Initiative 9 Material

Below is the printable petition for Initiative 9, which will raise the minimum wage to $15/hr in 2020. Please call us for copies and/or download and print it out. We need your help getting signatures.  Be sure to promptly return it to us at the address listed on the petition.

If you do decide to print it out, make sure it’s printed on 11 inches by 17 inches, portrait orientation, or the election officials will not accept the sheet.

You can download the petition as a PDF or even read it here if your screen device permits. In case you can’t read it on your screen and it’s inconvenient to download it, below is an official summary.

The city attorney created an impartial official title for this initiative. This title reads as follows:

Citizens’ Initiative Measure No. 9 concerns establishing a minimum wage for the City of Tacoma. This measure would require certain size employers to pay employees who work in the City of Tacoma, or maintain, report to, or are supervised from an office in the City, an hourly wage of not less than $14.25 on January 1, 2021, $15.00 on July 2021, then adjusted annually for inflation. This measure would create a citizen commission to monitor the City’s administration and enforcement of the minimum wage requirements and make violation a crime.

This is the City Attorney’s impartial explanatory statement, which will go into the voters’ handbook.

This measure, proposed by citizens’ initiative petition, would add a new chapter to the Tacoma Municipal Code entitled “Tacoma Minimum Wage Ordinance.” This ordinance establishes a minimum hourly wage of not less than $14.25 on January 1, 2021, and $15.00 on July 1, 2021. The ordinance applies to all employees who work more than two hours in the City of Tacoma, or maintain, report to, or are supervised from an office in the City, with the exception of employees engaged in casual labor in private homes and certain volunteers. Employers that receive exemptions or are subject to the small business phased tax credit under the City Tax and License Code, or are located outside of the City with gross income less than the highest dollar amount used for small business phased tax credits, are exempt. Beginning September 30, 2021, the minimum wage would increase annually by the greater of 4% or the rate of inflation using the CPI W for urban wage earners and clerical workers effective January 1st of the subsequent year, if the minimum wage is less than the affordable housing wage. The ordinance creates a citizen commission to monitor the City’s administration and enforcement of the minimum wage requirements, and makes violation a crime.

Minutes of August 4, 2019

You can read the minutes for August 4, 2019 below or download them by clicking here.

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Minutes of July 7, 2019

You can read the minutes for July 7, 2019 below or download them by clicking here.

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Minutes of June 1, 2019 Meeting

You can read the minutes for June 1, 2019 below or download them by clicking here.

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Victory for Tacoma Workers and Immigrants

Even Private Prisons Must Obey The Law

Northwest Detention CenterA Federal Court ruled that the NWDC must pay at least a minimum wage to inmates who work on site. This is a victory, not only for the worker inmates, but for all of Tacoma’s low-wage workers who fight for economic justice.

Seattle Times staff writer Mike Carter reported on the story on May 13. This story tells us that Federal Judge Robert Bryan has just ruled Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) must pay state minimum wage to worker inmates. In other words, NWDC can no longer get away with paying only $1/day to these locked-up workers.

Read more

Final initiative from 2015

Here is the PDF of the final 2015 initiative, which contains the language of the entire proposed law. At a later point, we will post a docx version of just the language.

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