An ordinance was passed unanimously by The Seattle City Council today that will gradually increase Seattle's minimum wage to $15 an hour, which would make it the highest in America.

Voters in Switzerland blocked a vote this afternoon that proposed instituting a countrywide minimum wage of 22 Swiss francs (roughly $25/hour) with a 76.3% majority. Switzerland currently has no minimum wage.

Conservatives want an exception to a recent federal rule requiring higher pay for fast-food-workers on military bases, because paying Joey 10 bucks an hour to salt the fries will drive BK out of business, and the troops will miss their Whoppers, and why do you hate the troops?

Protesters lobby for higher wages for fast food workers outside a McDonald's in New York City on Wednesday. Image via Andrew Burton/Getty.

Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked a vote to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Today, Seattle officials announced they would raise the city's minimum wage to $15 in increments over the next few years. Happy May Day.

Senate Republicans, who are active enemies of the poor, blocked a minimum wage increase today.

"The odds that Congress will pass an increase in the U.S. minimum wage before the November elections are so low that even the nation's lobbyists are largely ignoring it."

It appears that Americans may soon, at long last, get an increase in the federal minimum wage. The public is for it. Economists are for it. And today, Republican opponents may have generated their most outrageous counter-proposal yet.

The very rich have their politicians, and the very poor have their advocates. Will someone speak for the lower middle class? How retro!

Last week, voters in SeaTac, Washington voted to raise the minimum wage for airport workers to $15 an hour. California recently approved a statewide minimum wage of $10. As low wage workers increasingly voice their frustration with their shitty lot in life, it's time to raise the minimum wage— everywhere.

With many stores staying open during Thanksgiving this year thereby forcing workers to miss out on spending the holiday with their families, one store manager decided to take a stand on behalf of his employees — and was promptly terminated.

California just became the first state in America to vow to raise its minimum wage to $10 per hour by 2016. The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour. That may change one day, if our congresspeople ever find the time amid their pointless, 21-hour rants.

The Obama administration has approved new rules that will extend minimum wage and overtime pay to home health care workers in 2015. Home care workers have been exempt from federal wage laws since 1974 when “they were placed in the same category as neighborhood baby sitters.”

There's sorta hope. The California Legislature just approved a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour by the start of 2016. Currently the highest state minimum wage in the country is in Washington state, where workers make $9.19 an hour.

Fed up with their district manager's abusive mistreatment, employees at a Journeys footwear and apparel store inside Rochester's Marketplace Mall decided to storm out together in the middle of the day, during the busy Back to School season, locking up the store behind them.

McDonald's is under fire this week for launching a "budget planner" for employees that can best be summed up with the following maxim: If you don't want to end up homeless and possibly dead, get yourself a second job.

"If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now."

The deadly collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh has sparked calls for better worker treatment. The revelation that Apple manages to avoid almost all taxes has drawn vague calls for tax reform. A more direct path to fairness: let's just have a reasonable international minimum wage.

The job description is simple enough:

In the past 40 years or so, CEOs have gone from earning 20 times more than the average worker, to more than 230 times the average worker. Over the same period of time, unions have weakened to the point that successful companies feel comfortable asking for unprecedented concessions from workers at the same time the company is reaping record profits. What do these things have to do with each other? Everything.