Fight for $15 Activists Meet in Richmond

T-Mobile, Envoy Air, and Tennessee State University employees will join thousands of workers in Richmond, Va., this week, rallying around the nationwide campaign for $15 an hour and a union at the national Fight for $15 convention.

In November 2015, nearly 5,000 Envoy workers voted for CWA representation; they are bargaining for a first contract and to close the wage and benefit gap between workers at regional operations like Envoy and parent company American Airlines Group. Rebecca Disbrow, a T-Mobile customer service representative in Boise, Idaho, will speak about T-Mobile workers' fight for fair wages and a CWA voice.

Watch a livestream of the events at fightfor15.org.

At the convention, participants will vote on a plan to mobilize workers for the 2016 presidential election and beyond. They will take stock of their nearly four-year-old movement's stunning successes – almost 20 million workers have won significant raises as a direct result of the Fight for $15, including some 10 million who are on their way to $15 an hour – and chart a course for all working Americans to gain fair wages and fair treatment.

On Saturday, Rev. William Barber will join some 10,000 activists, including members of CWA Local 2201, in a march on Richmond's monuments to the Confederacy that still stand today, making the connection between the racist policies that result in the poverty level wages paid to too many workers. "We will not stop marching, stop striking, stop joining together until we win $15 an hour and union rights for all our sisters and brothers across the nation," he said.

Across the country, more than half of black workers and nearly 60 percent of Latino workers are paid less than $15 per hour, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project.