WaPo:
District Mayor Vincent C. Gray vetoed legislation Thursday that would force the city’s largest retailers to pay a super-minimum wage to their workers, ending two months of uncertainty over the controversial bill’s fate and setting up a decisive override vote at the D.C. Council as early as Tuesday.
The debate over the bill, the Large Retailer Accountability Act, has polarized local leaders while garnering national attention and putting focus on the low wages many retail chains pay their workers.
The interesting thing is the growing politicization of the low-wage service sector. It’s a sector that once almost made no noise, or at least society had no ears for that kind of noise. Then the crash, then the bailout, then the long recession, then the increase in low-wage work, then the grumbling in the ground. What will happen when the owners of capital in this sector of the economy run out of political weapons? Will they meet the demands of their workers or will they turn to other solutions?
