A national coalition of more than 100 organizations, including teachers unions and lawmakers, is pushing for a federal $25 minimum wage bill.
Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and Rep. Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., on Tuesday introduced the Living Wage for All Act — a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $25-per-hour and eliminate subminimum wages.
Mejia, a founding member of the Living Wage for All coalition, is pushing the bill as her first legislative action since winning a special election for a New Jersey House seat in a landslide last week, defeating Republican candidate Joe Hathaway.
Mejia ran on a platform that emphasized Medicare for all, a $25 minimum wage, a wealth tax, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Living Wage for All Coalition is a “national campaign of more than 100 labor, community, civil rights, and economic justice organizations working together to win a living wage for every worker in America.”
The most notable organizations joining Mejia and Ramirez to support the legislation include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the largest teachers’ union in the U.S., the National Education Association (NEA).
Another organization in the coalition, One Fair Wage, advocates for a higher minimum wage across the country.
“This is a worker-led movement that has grown from the groundbreaking Fight for $15 into a nationwide push for a true living wage,” said One Fair Wage president Saru Jayaraman.
“Across the country — from California to the Midwest to the East Coast — workers are organizing for $25 and $30 because that is what it takes to live,” she said. “The polling shows this is not just popular, it is necessary. And ‘for all’ means exactly that: no worker left behind. This is what it looks like when politics begins to catch up to reality — and when democracy delivers real improvements in people’s lives, it becomes tangible. A living wage is how we make that promise real.”
Minimum wage mandate proposals have already made inroads in other major cities.
A minimum wage mandate has gone as high as $30 in Los Angeles through a bill signed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, though, planned as a phase-in process with incremental growth until 2030.
On the East Coast, the city council in New York City is weighing a proposal to boost the minimum wage to up to $30, coming after newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge promoting a “$30 by ’30′” minimum wage message.
One of the members of the Living Wage for All coalition, One Fair Wage, in March launched a ballot initiative in Oakland, California as local officials consider increasing the minimum wage to $30 an hour in partnership with other community organizations, including the United Auto Workers union.
Large businesses with over 100 employees that make $1 billion annually would have until 2030 to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour.
The initiative is part of a national movement to raise the minimum wage.
Starting in 2024, One Fair Wage advanced ballot measures to raise wages and “end various subminimum wages” in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona and Massachusetts. Including California, the group wants to raise the minimum wage in Illinois, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
According to its website, “One Fair Wage is moving legislation and ballot measures in 25 states to raise wages and end subminimum wages for millions of workers — and mobilize millions to vote in the process — by the United States’ 250th Anniversary (2026).”
