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living wage
'Now Is Your Time of Need': Bernie Sanders, Mayor Mamdani Join Striking Nurses in NYC
"Don't tell me you can't provide a good nurse-staff ratio when you're paying your CEO at New York Presbyterian $26 million a year, the CEO at Montefiore $16 million a year, Mount Sinai $5 million a year," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jan 20, 2026
As the largest nurses strike in the history of New York City marched into its second week with no resolution in sight, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined hundreds of picketers in the bitter cold on Tuesday to support their fight for better pay and workplace protections.
Last week, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) announced that nearly 15,000 NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, and Montefiore hospital employees had "no choice" but to go on strike after the hospitals failed to meet their demands for safe staffing, workplace violence protections, safeguards against the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, and to maintain 100% of their healthcare benefits.
Outside Mount Sinai West on 10th Avenue, Mamdani, attending his second picket, called for a "swift and urgent resolution" to the workers' demands after negotiations with the hospitals stalled last week and the chains began hiring replacement workers.
"This is about safe working conditions. This is about a fair contract. This is about dignity. And today is day nine—day nine—of those demands, and I want you to know that wherever I go in New York City, I hear about the plight of our nurses," the democratic socialist mayor said. "Now is your time of need, where we can ensure that this is a city that you don't just work in but a city that you can also live in."
In comments to CBS News New York, the hospital chains have scoffed at the NYSNA's demands for a 25% pay increase, especially in the wake of massive healthcare funding cuts from President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
A spokesperson for NewYork-Presbyterian said its nurses—who it said earn $163,000 on average—are among the highest-paid in the city, calling demands for a pay increase "unrealistic." A Montefiore spokesperson told the network that progress on negotiations will be impossible until the nurses "back away from their reckless and dangerous $3.6 billion demands."
But New York is also one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage calculator, the nurses' wages are often barely enough to meet a family's basic needs, especially for single parents with children.
NYSNA, meanwhile, has said management "is threatening to discontinue or radically cut nurses’ health benefits" and has done nothing to combat severe understaffing.
"We’re talking an emergency room filled to the brink,” said one of the strikers, staff nurse Morgan Betancourt. “Ninety patients, and we have maybe nine nurses.”
On Tuesday, Sanders (I-Vt.) emphasized that the hospitals' sudden frugality has been of little concern when it comes to compensating hospital executives.
"Don't tell me you can't provide a good nurse-staff ratio when you're paying your CEO at NewYork Presbyterian $26 million a year, the CEO at Montefiore $16 million a year, Mount Sinai $5 million a year," Sanders shouted to applause from the strikers. "Don't tell me you can't treat nurses with dignity when you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on traveling nurses."
According to the Greater New York Hospital Association, the three hospitals combined had spent approximately $100 million to pay temporary nurses as of the fourth day of the strike. Temporary staffing agencies have required hospitals to pay scabs two to three times as much as they'd pay their regular nurses, Bloomberg reported.
Negotiations remain at a total standstill after breaking down last week. While the hospitals claim the union refused to budge on unreasonable demands, Jonathan Hunter, a negotiator for Mount Sinai nurses, told Spectrum News NY1, "They basically stonewalled us, presented us with nothing, and we left with nothing."
The strike has left the hospital system in a state of upheaval, forcing some patients to be moved and nonemergency surgeries to be canceled. Mamdani said it's all the more reason for the hospitals to reach an agreement with their workers.
"Too often when we see a strike, people forget that that is not where workers want to be," Mamdani said. "A strike is an act of last resort. What workers want is to be back at work. So what this will mean is making that possible. And so we call on every side to come back to that negotiating table. Have a swift and urgent resolution."
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'A National Disgrace': 19 States to Raise Minimum Wage But Federal Rate Stuck at $7.25
One Fair Wage noted that "tipped workers can still legally be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, a system advocates describe as a direct legacy of slavery."
Dec 31, 2025
Over a third of US states are set to raise their minimum hourly wage in 2026, but worker advocates including Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday decried a federal minimum wage that's remained at $7.25 since 2009—and just $2.13 an hour for tipped workers for over three decades.
Minimum wage hikes are set to go into effect in 19 states on Thursday: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Increases range from 28 cents in Minnesota to $2 in Hawaii, with an average hike of 67 cents across all 19 states. More than 8.3 million workers will benefit from the increases, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The mean minimum wage in those 19 states will rise to $14.57 in 2026, up from $13.90 this year.
Three more states—Alaska, Florida, and Oregon—plus Washington, DC are scheduled to raise their minimum wages later in 2026.
In addition to the state hikes, nearly 50 counties and municipalities plan to raise their minimum wages in the coming year, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP). These include San Diego, California—where the minimum wage for hospitality workers is set to rise to $25 an hour by 2030—and Portland, Maine, where all workers will earn at least $19 by 2028.
However, the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25, and the subminimum rate for tipped workers is $2.13, where it's been since 1991—and has lost more than half its purchasing power since then.
The federal minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 since 2009. In 2026, workers in 19 states and 49 cities and counties an increase. Alabama’s rate will stay at $7.25. 🔗 https://t.co/mrGfPAKba3 pic.twitter.com/EsokVIc6KP
— AL.com (@aldotcom) December 31, 2025
"Tipped workers can still legally be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, a system advocates describe as a direct legacy of slavery," the advocacy group One Fair Wage (OFW) said in a statement Tuesday.
Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media on the eve of the hikes: "Congratulations to the 19 states raising the minimum wage in 2026. But let’s be clear: A $7.25 federal minimum wage is a national disgrace. No one who works full time should live in poverty. We must keep fighting to guarantee all workers a living wage—not starvation wages."
Yannet Lathrop, NELP's senior researcher and policy analyst, said earlier this month that "the upcoming minimum wage increases are incremental and won’t magically turn severely underpaid jobs into living-wage jobs, but they do offer a bit of relief at a time when every dollar matters for people."
“The bigger picture is that raising the minimum wage is just one piece of a much larger fight for a good jobs economy rooted in living wages and good benefits for every working person," Lathrop added. "That’s where we need to get to."
Numerous experts note that neither $7.25, nor even $15 an hour, is a livable wage anywhere in the United States.
"The gap between wages and real living costs is stark," OFW said. "According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, there is no county in the United States where a worker can afford to meet basic needs on less than $25 an hour. Even in the nation’s least expensive counties, a worker with one child would need at least $33 an hour to cover essentials like rent, food, childcare, and transportation."
"Advocates argue that policies like President [Donald] Trump’s 'no tax on tips' proposal fail to address the underlying problem of poverty wages," OFW continued. "While the policy has drawn attention, they say it is a headline rather than a solution, particularly since nearly two-thirds of tipped workers do not earn enough to owe federal income taxes."
Frustrated by the long-unchanged $7.25 federal minimum wage, numerous states in recent years have let voters give themselves raises via ballot initiatives. Such measures have been successful even in some red states, including Missouri and Nebraska.
Rising minimum wages are a legacy of the union-backed #FightFor15 movement that began among striking fast-food workers in 2012. At least 20 states now have minimum wages of $15 or higher.
However, back then, "the buying power of a $15 minimum wage was substantially higher than it is today," EPI noted. "In 2025, a $15 minimum wage does not achieve economic security for working people in most of the country. This is particularly true in the highest cost-of-living cities."
In April, US senators voted down an amendment that would have raised the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour. Every Democratic and Independent upper chamber lawmaker voted in favor of the measure, while all Republicans except Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) rejected it.
As Trump administration and Republican policies and practices—such as passing healthcare legislation that does not include an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to expire on Wednesday and send premiums soaring—coupled with persistently high living costs squeeze workers, advocates say a living wage is more important than ever.
The issue is underscored by glaring income and wealth inequality in the US, as well as a roughly 285:1 CEO to worker pay gap among S&P 500 companies last year.
"Minimum wage doesn't cover the cost of living," Janae van De Kerk, an organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Airport Workers union and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport employee, said in a video posted Tuesday on social media.
"Minimum wage doesn't cover the cost of living. Many of my co-workers have to choose between food on the table or health insurance" Janae, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport service worker No one should have to make that choice.
[image or embed]
— Airport Workers United (@goodairports.bsky.social) December 30, 2025 at 10:34 AM
"Many of my co-workers have to choose between food on the table or health insurance, or the choice between having food and paying the electric bill," van De Kerk—who advocates a $25 hourly minimum wage—continued.
"We shouldn't have to worry about those things," she added. "We shouldn't have to stress about those things. We're willing to work and we wanna work, and we should be paid for our work."
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Bowing to Restaurant Lobby, DC Guts Voter-Approved Plan to End Subminimum Wage for Tipped Workers
"Call it what it is: a pay cut and a betrayal of the working people," said One Fair Wage.
Jul 31, 2025
With backing from the restaurant lobby, the Washington, D.C. city council voted Monday to gut plans to raise wages for tipped workers, which had already been approved by the public.
It's the second time the council has overturned a wage increase for tipped workers that the public voted for, having already done so once in 2018.
Under federal law, tipped workers are allowed to be paid a much lower minimum wage—just $2.13 per hour compared with $7.25 for nontipped workers. Tipped workers are, consequentially, more likely to live in poverty.
This is the case in Washington, D.C., where, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, 7.7% of tipped workers live in poverty compared to 2.6% of nontipped workers.
In 2022, D.C. voters overwhelmingly voted to address this problem, supporting Initiative 82, which would have gradually raised the minimum wage for tipped workers—just over $5.35 an hour at the time—to match what other workers receive by 2027.
In 2022, D.C.'s standard minimum wage—which increases each year pegged to inflation—was $16.10. As of 2025, it has increased to $17.95.
As the initiative to raise the tipped minimum wage began, restaurant industry lobbying groups like the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) fought tooth-and-nail to roll it back.
In Jacobin, Raeghn Draper wrote that this group, and others like it around the country, "claim to speak on behalf of restaurant workers, but they are not worker organizations."
Instead, Draper wrote, "They are extensions of the National Restaurant Association (NRA), an industry group historically aligned with large corporate chains like McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Olive Garden—none exactly known for their commitment to workers' rights or well-being."
These groups waged an aggressive disinformation campaign, claiming that by phasing out the subminimum wage, restaurants, crushed by their increasing operating costs, would be forced to close en masse.
The RAMW even touted a survey of its own member restaurants purporting to show that 44% of full-service casual restaurants would have no choice but to close their doors by the end of 2025 due to the policy.
As Draper points out, citing data from an independent investigation by D.C.'s Office of the Budget Director, "the number of D.C. restaurant closures in 2024 did rise slightly compared to the previous year, but restaurant openings also increased, outpacing closures by a margin of two to one."
A study by the EPI likewise found that—despite industry claims that the higher wage requirements were forcing restaurants to lay off their employees—D.C. was seeing more employment growth than other towns in the region without requirements to raise wages.
But media outlets uncritically reported the restaurant industry's narrative about mass closures, and their attempts to "manufacture a crisis," as Draper says, paid off.
While making public appearances with restaurant industry lobbyists, Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser signed legislation halting the wage increases in June—freezing the tipped minimum wage at $10 an hour. She pushed for a full repeal, which would have knocked the tipped wage back down to $8 an hour. But the city council voted it down.
On Monday, despite fierce protests from workers and unions, the city council voted 7-5 to freeze the tipped wage at $10 until July 2026, when it will increase by a measly five cents. They also voted to dramatically slow the tipped wage increases to just 5% each year until 2034, when it will be capped at 75% of the standard minimum wage.
Members of the council, as well as many media outlets, including Axios and The Washington Post, described the decision as a "compromise" between employers and workers. RAMW, which lamented that it was "not a full repeal," has portrayed it that way, though it nevertheless described it as a "win for the industry."
Fair wage activists, however, described it not as a compromise, but an assault on a hard-won democratic victory.
"In what world is this a compromise?" asked One Fair Wage, one of the groups that campaigned for the initiative. "Call it what it is: a pay cut and a betrayal of the working people."
"D.C. Council just voted to overturn the will of the people and freeze wages for tipped workers," said the Fair Budget Coalition in a post on X following the vote. "As rents and other costs rise, it is a CHOICE to maintain a subminimum wage for struggling D.C. residents."
According to EPI, a person living in Washington, D.C. needs to earn just under $31 an hour to afford the cost of living. The average wage paid to tipped workers like bartenders, waiters, and waitresses falls several dollars short of this.
"The voters told us what they wanted when they voted overwhelmingly for I-82—twice—and this is not it," said Brianne Nadeau, one of the council members who voted against reversing the wage hikes. "Restaurant workers and the organizations that represent them have been fighting this battle for wage protections for years, and they shouldn't have to keep fighting it. And this council should not keep on telling the voters they don't know what's best for themselves."
"The council chose corporate lobbyists over tipped workers," said One Fair Wage. To the council members who voted for it, they said: "We see you. We won't forget."
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