Efforts to raise the minimum age pay off; new goals in mind

by Shana Schneider, News Reporter

University of Wisconsin students burdened by increasing housing costs, utility bills and the higher costs of living in a city will soon experience some financial relief.

The City Council voted March 30 in favor of an ordinance to raise the city’s minimum wage to $7.75 with a 12-7 vote. This decision came after months of laborious work by Ald. Austin King, District 8, who drafted the ordinance, and the Madison Fair Wage Campaign, which he co-founded.

King began the campaign last September with University of Wisconsin student Joe Lindstrom and former Ald. Tom Powell. The organization gathered more than 13,000 signatures in favor of the wage raise, well over the necessary 12,853 needed to qualify for a referendum.

“During the campaign, we were in Library Mall from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. for two weeks straight. [We had] people stationed at the Memorial Union and the dorms. We were very visible for two straight weeks,” Julie Shevrin, volunteer coordinator for the Madison Fair Wage Campaign, said.

The campaign was successful in raising awareness and gathering signatures on campus and within the Madison community over a period of 60 days. The overwhelming response to the campaign is attributable to the student-volunteer force, which consisted of more than 200 members.

“The response [to the ordinance] has been great. The campus and community have been very supportive and have been very involved,” Shevrin said.

Although the signatures were intended to support a ballot referendum, the Madison Fair Wage Steering Committee decided instead to support Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s minimum-wage plan, which subjects the ordinance to the Council process.

“The council process allows for more public input and will improve [the] legal case when big business sues to overturn the fair wage law,” a statement on the organization’s website reads.

Ald. Brenda Konkel, District 2, was among the majority who voted to adopt the ordinance at the March 30 meeting.

“We have a higher cost of living here in Madison, and people need to make higher wages in order to afford to live here,” Konkel said.

Many opponents argued a wage hike at the city level could be harmful, since it would make Madison a wage island, isolating the city from the rest of the state. To prevent this from happening, many would like to see a minimum wage increase implemented at the state level.

Both King and Konkel support a statewide wage increase.

“I think the state should [raise the minimum wage], but I have little faith that they will be successful and [at the time of the vote] I didn’t feel that we could wait any longer here in Madison,” Konkel said. “We have excessively high rents and too many people making low wages.”