Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle said Thursday that his effort to build consensus behind raising the city’s minimum wage to $15, more than twice the federal rate, had faltered amid continuing differences between business leaders and labor unions that had been advising him on the issue.
“We’re stuck at the moment,” Mr. Murray said in a news conference where he had been expected to present a proposal for raising the wage to one of the highest in the country. Instead, Mr. Murray, a Democrat and former state senator who was elected last year on a promise to fight economic inequality, said the negotiations were continuing on a committee of elected officials and business and labor interests that he had appointed to develop a wage plan.
The mayor said that he was as committed as ever to a $15 minimum wage, with a cost of living adjustment mechanism that would push the wage to $17 over time — and that the committee had agreed in principle on that much as well. But after the committee could not reach agreement by a deadline this week, he said that he had decided to let it continue its deliberations to avoid having the issue placed before voters this fall as a ballot initiative, a move threatened by some labor advocates.
A protracted fight over such an initiative might lead to “class warfare,” the mayor warned. “I’m probably less optimistic than I was this morning, but I still remain optimistic. If this fails, we’ll try something else until we get to $15.”
APRIL 25, 2014