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After a year of strikes and protests there’s a victory for many federal workers demanding that their government to pay them a living wage. President Obama in tonight’s State of the Union address will announce plans to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. The action affects workers currently earning less and will apply to new federal contracts.

Low-wage, federally-contracted janitors and construction workers will have a new minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, under an executive order announced by the White House Tuesday. Advocates said the full scope of the order, which will be formally announced during tonight’s State of the Union address, remains unclear, but could include hundreds of thousands of employees under future federal contracts. [...]

President Obama's promised executive order to raise the minimum wage for some government contract workers would likely affect less than half a million people and may face legal challenge.

What Obama is hoping is that his relatively narrow move will spur Congress to follow suit for all low-wage workers in the country.

During his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will announce plans to issue an executive order giving a raise to low-wage workers on new federal contracts, a move that affects thousands of people in the Washington area, the White House says.

Dem Rep. Keith Ellison has been one of the leading proponents of the executive action that President Obama will announce tonight boosting the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors. In an interview this morning, he argued that this move has broader significance than it first appears.

Republican lawmakers challenged President Barack Obama’s plan to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors, suggesting it would have little impact on workers and could exacerbate partisan gridlock.

(NEW YORK, NY) – This morning, the White House announced that President Obama will sign a “Good Jobs” Executive Order requiring government contractors to raise the minimum wage for their lowest-paid workers to $10.10 for all new and renegotiated contracts. The president will include this announcement in his State of the Union Address tonight.

One of the more concrete actions President Obama can take tomorrow is announcing an executive order to raise the wages of federal contractors. As my colleagues, Amy Traub and Robbie Hiltonsmith found the federal government is the nation’s leading low-wage employer, with nearly two million private sector employees paid through federal contracts, grants, loans, concession agreements and property leases were paid $12 or less per hour.