Business

One Fair Wage Battle Continues to Broaden Across Federal Lines

THE AFRO — Last week the fight for fair wages once again made it to the Hill,

Published

7 years ago

February 25, 2019

By George Kevin Jordan

Last week the fight for fair wages once again made it to the Hill as legislators and advocates pushed for two pieces of legislation during congressional briefings on the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Raise Wage Act. But organizers advocating for tipped workers in the District say people are feeling pinch of income disparities now.

The Raise Wage Act (H.R. 582) would ultimately increase the federal minimum wage from 8.55 to $15 an hour within five years. The Paycheck Fairness Act, helps to strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to push for more transparency in pay disclosures, and limiting the ways in which pay scales can be assessed. It would make the EEOC collect data and make it harder for employees to be discriminated against for inquiring about pay.

The legislation also offers protections for women and members of marginalized communities.

One Fair Wage and the the Restaurant Opportunities Center D.C. are still in the fight for raising the wages of tipped workers on a national and local level. (Courtesy Photo)

Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center gave testimony last week and offered insight to how women and particularly women are impacted by the current laws.

In her official testimony, Graves stated that:

“When women are shortchanged, families suffer. More than 24.9 million mothers with children under 18 are in the workforce, making up nearly 1 in 6 – or 26 percent – of all workers. The great majority of mothers in the workforce work full time. In 2015, 42 percent of mothers were the sole or primary breadwinners in their families, while 22.4 percent of mothers were co- breadwinners, meaning mothers’ earnings are critical to families’ financial security. And those working mothers also face a wage gap, paid only 71 cents for every dollar paid to fathers, a gap that translates to a typical loss of $16,000 annually.

Closing the wage gap would help lift women and children out of poverty. Nearly one in eight women in the U.S. live in poverty, with high rates for women of color, including 11 percent of Asian women, 21 percent of Black women and 18 percent of Latinas. More than 1 in 3 families headed by unmarried mothers lived in poverty in 2017, and over half of all poor children (58 percent) lived in families headed by unmarried mothers. Closing the wage gap is not only fair, it is urgently needed.”

The Raise Wage Act would also bolster pay for tipped workers which more often tend to be Brown and Black women. D.C. has been embroiled in a long standing battle to offer increased wages to tipped workers. Currently while D.C.’s wage is 12.50 an hour, tipped workers are at $3.89 an hour, with plans to go up to $5.00 by 2020.

Initiative 77 was introduced in the District to push tipped workers up to $15 minimum wage by 2025. However that bill was overturned by the D.C. Council.

The wage gap impacts many tipped workers in the District according to data for the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and ROC D.C.

D.C. is home to about 56,000 workers in the restaurant industry, with 2,267 establishments, According to ROC United/D.C. data. Restaurant sales hit $3.8 billion in 2017. As the restaurant workforce is predicted to grow, however, the income disparities are glaring.

About 25 percent of tipped workers are on Medicaid and 16 percent utilize food stamps. About 24 percent of servers are on Medicaid and 17.4 percent use food stamps. Tipped restaurant workers using medicaid and food stamps are 24.9 percent and 14.7 percent respectively. This is compared to 11.5 percent and 9.1 percent of overall workforce on medicaid and food stamps.

“It’s an important issue issue regardless of where you live, but particularly in D.C. which has, as we see, income disparity and housing disparities all across the city. It’s definitely just a small microcosm of a larger issue,” said Candace Cunningham, and organizer with ROC D.C.

As the larger federal bills move towards a vote in the House and Senate, ROC D.C. will try to repeal the D.C. Council’s decision to overturn and keep pushing for higher wages for tipped workers.

While the referendum in D.C. for increasing wages for tipped workers is at a standstill, ROC D.C. still continues to “push as hard as we can on a national level and locally we’re continuing to focus on improving working conditions and building coalitions,” Cunningham said.

This article originally appeared in The Afro.

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Activism

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses. The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, was one of the speakers at the event. Photo by Shellee Fisher Photography and Design.

By Calvin Naito, Special to The Post

On June 4, a national nonprofit named the Equity in Infrastructure Project (EIP) – which aims to increase public construction contracting opportunities for small and historically underutilized businesses – held a day-long event in downtown San Francisco to rally supporters and build momentum to its cause.

It was attended by more than 100 individuals from public agencies, private firms, and other organizations committed to increasing contracting opportunities with governmental agencies, thereby creating more competition and lowering public costs.

The EIP event was held the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in conjunction with BuildIT, which aims to increase contracting opportunities for LGBT-owned businesses.

At the event, 16 entities signed the EIP pledge, vowing to take steps to increase public contracting opportunities in their spheres for small and historically underutilized businesses.

The pledge signees included Hub International, the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California High-Speed Rail Authority, the Port of Oakland, Robert Graham of Webcor Builders, Holder Construction, the Weitz Company, Sky Blue Builders, Hornblower, Swinerton, Luster National, Talson Solutions, Center for Community Wealth Building, and the Construction Contractors Alliance.

Following the workshop, BuildIT hosted a VIP evening reception honoring EIP, whose principals – Phil Washington, John Procari, and Rick Jacobs – accepted the award.

The event also set in motion the coalition’s efforts to implement recommendations from EIP’s “Procurement for Prosperity: A Playbook.”

The Playbook is a practical guide for public agency leaders and procurement and contracting practitioners to grow the capacity of small and first-time contractors, strengthen competition, and deliver better value for taxpayers.

Toks Omishakin, Secretary of the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), a long-time EIP supporter, also told attendees, “This is about commitment. This has been a life’s work. This is a tailwind moment.”

The event’s presenting sponsor was Hub International, one of the largest insurance brokerages in the nation, which was joined by partners Travelers Insurance and the State Compensation Insurance Fund.

After the pledge-signing ceremony, attendees participated in a workshop in which they examined the policies, practices, and programs needed to meet EIP goals, learned from practitioners, and identified next steps toward utilizing the Playbook.

Ingrid Meriwether, formerly of Merriwether & Williams Insurance Services (MWIS) and current president of Hub International’s Aligned Risk Management, MWIS, described the hard-fought lessons she and her MWIS team have learned over the last three decades administering contractor development programs (CDPs) for the City and County of San Francisco, Alameda County, City of Los Angeles, LA Metro, and other municipalities.

The CDPs help small and local construction firms win public infrastructure contracts with these government agencies. The program provides bonding assistance, contract financing, technical support, training, and other services to underrepresented businesses funded by public agencies who seek greater contracting participation with these firms.

Merriwether said programs like these “break down systemic barriers, create greater fairness, and save taxpayers money by enabling more competition. The contractor development programs have, cumulatively, over two decades, helped contractors access over $1 billion in bonding, supporting over $380 million in awarded contracts, and maintaining a loss ratio 250 times lower than the industry average – while saving participating municipalities more than $27 million in contracting costs as a result of enabling more competition.”

Rick Jacobs, EIP co-founder and co-chair urged attendees make plans to meet again in the near future “to continue building on this work, share progress on organizational commitments, and discuss how we can collectively advance the goals of the EIP pledge.”

For more information on the EIP and to access a copy of the Playbook, go online to https://equityininfrastructure.org/

Calvin Naito is communications manager for Equity in Infrastructure Project.

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Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

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Alameda County

Ferry Fares to Increase July 1 as Ridership Hits Record Highs

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Courtesy photo.

By Mike Aldax, The Richmond Standard

Starting July 1, the standard adult fare for the San Francisco Bay Ferry route between Richmond and San Francisco will increase to $5.20, up from the current $4.90.

Discounted fares for eligible passengers, including youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and Clipper START users, will rise to $2.60 from the current $2.40. Children under 5 will continue to ride for free.

The Oakland and Alameda routes will increase from $4.90 to $5.10, the South San Francisco route will go up from $7.40 to $7.60, and the Vallejo route will increase from $9.90 to $10.

The adjustments are part of a systemwide fare update approved by the agency’s Board of Directors, which is moving away from a flat 3% annual increase to route-specific pricing for the 2027 and 2028 fiscal years.

This fare update arrives as San Francisco Bay Ferry celebrates a historic May, transporting 301,270 passengers. The record-breaking figure represents an 8% increase over May 2025 and marks the third consecutive month of record-setting ridership.

Furthermore, it is the sixth month in a row that passenger numbers have exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Weekend travel has been a primary driver of this growth, with average weekend ridership seeing a 56% increase compared to pre-pandemic trends.

The agency states that the fare adjustments are necessary to ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of public ferry services. By shifting to route-specific adjustments, the agency aims to offset rising operating costs while maintaining the high levels of service frequency and reliability.