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Oprah Highlights Life on the Minimum Wage |
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The nation’s minimum wage has been frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997.
Despite the best efforts of worker-friendly lawmakers and the efforts of America’s working families, who have sent millions of letters, post cards and e-mails urging Congress to increase the federal minimum wage, Republican congressional leaders, the Bush administration and their corporate buddies have blocked every effort to boost the pay for America’s lowest-paid workers.
It’s time for the big guns.
It’s time for Oprah Winfrey.
On Friday, April 14, Oprah will devote the entire hour of her hugely popular Oprah Winfrey Show to “Inside the Lives of People Living on the Minimum Wage.”
The show will explore the struggles of workers and their families as they try to get by on a minimum wage that gives a full-time worker just $206 a week—before taxes.
Since the minimum wage show was announced, nearly 100 people have visited the Oprah Winfrey website to comment on the difficulties of living on a wage that is just $912 a year above the federal poverty level of $9,800 for a single worker. Writes one woman:
I know what it is like to live from one paycheck to another; it’s very hard. It gets so hard that at times I don’t have money to even buy myself a little something I want. My daughter has tried very hard to get a job, and it’s not easy for her because she didn’t finish [high school]. Nowadays, it’s very hard for anyone to live on a decent salary; rents are high and everything else you need to survive on.
Oprah, who struggled with the direst of poverty as a child, brings firsthand understanding of how hard it is to get by when those who make the rules have no connection with those who must follow them.
Check your local listings for time and station of the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Meanwhile, led by the AFL-CIO union movement, activists continue the push for raises in the minimum wage on the state and federal levels. There are grassroots campaigns under way in more than 20 states to increase the minimum wage either through legislation or ballot initiatives. The Pennsylvania state Senate is expected to vote soon on House-passed legislation that would boost the Keystone State’s minimum wage to $7.15 an hour.
The huge popularity of raising the minimum wage has even forced many long-time (mostly Republican) lawmakers opposed to raising the minimum wage to back an increase. It’s part of an effort to defuse this issue—one that could boost working family turnout in the November elections and threaten legislators who oppose raising the minimum wage.
In Arkansas, union activists working with community groups in a “Give Arkansas A Raise Now” campaign saw their efforts pay off April 10 when Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) signed legislation increasing the state minimum wage to $6.25 an hour starting Oct. 1. Huckabee told reporters he went along with the increase to head off a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that also would include automatic cost-of-living increases.
In Congress, the Fair Minimum Wage Act (S. 1062 and H.R. 2429) would raise the federal minimum to $7.25 an hour over two years. Click here to become a citizen co-sponsor, as nearly 100,000 people already have.
Want to see how tough it is to live on the minimum wage? Check out the AFL-CIO minimum wage calculator to find out. Find out what the minimum wage is in your state, click here.
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