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‘Give Missourians a Raise’ |
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The campaign to “Give Missourians a Raise” kicked off yesterday in St. Louis with a coalition of unions, community and faith groups and low-wage workers outlining their plans to win a November ballot issue to boost the Show-Me state’s minimum wage.
As in all states that match their wage to the federal level, minimum wage workers in Missouri have earned just $5.15 an hour since 1997, while inflation, gas prices and other expenses have eaten more deeply into its already low value.
“This is an issue of human dignity and common sense. We’re not a third world country,” says Bob Soutier, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Greater St. Louis Labor Council.
The Missouri proposal would increase the state’s minimum wage to $6.50 an hour and index the wage to the cost of living, ensuring inflation doesn’t diminish the value.
Earlier this month, the “Give Missourians a Raise” coalition delivered more than 210,000 signatures to the secretary of state from state voters who want to put a minimum wage raise before the voters in November. That’s more than twice the number needed to get the measure on the ballot.
About 150,000 Missouri workers and their families would benefit from the pay raise, including workers who earn the minimum wage and others who make less than the $6.50 an hour the new wage law would require.
Opponents of the measure—business groups and many Republican lawmakers—claim the majority of the minimum wage workers are teenage part-timers and that any increase would hurt job growth.
But in Missouri, 72 percent of the workers who earn the minimum wage are older than 21, says the Rev. Audry Hollis, with the St. Louis Area Jobs with Justice:
How can you design a wage that is going to keep people in poverty? Any person who works full-time should be making a livable wage with benefits.
Recent studies in Florida and other states where the minimum wage has increased show jobs aren’t lost and the economy benefits.
“There is no evidence it will create a loss of jobs,” Soutier says.
Today in Kansas City, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) will join “Give Missourians a Raise” coalition members in another kick-off event.
The Missouri effort is part of a larger “America Needs a Raise” campaign to raise the minimum wage, led by the AFL-CIO and Working America. The campaign includes work in at least 17 states, including pushes for ballot initiatives in four states.
At the federal level, House Democrats are moving to bring to the floor a minimum wage bill that Republican leaders repeatedly have blocked. The legislation (H.R. 2429), introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), would raise the rate to $7.25 an hour over two years. Because the bill has been blocked, backers need a “discharge petition” to move it to the floor, which requires the signatures of 218 House members.
Click here to urge your representative to sign the petition.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the Senate version (S. 1062) of the minimum wage increase. Click here to become a citizen co-sponsor.
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