$7.25 an Hour NOW

by Mike Hall, Jul 21, 2006

“I’m a lumberjack, and I’m not OK…because I get paid a lousy minimum wage.” With apologies to Monty Python, that could be one of the chants Minnesota union and Working America members bust out this Sunday at the Lumberjack Days Parade in Stillwater, Minn.

As they take part in the festivities, union and community activists also will be trying to chop down the failed policies of House members such as Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-Minn.). Kennedy has opposed legislation to raise the $5.15 federal minimum wage and is among the members of Congress bottling up House and Senate legislation (H.R. 2429 and S. 1062) that would raise the minimum to $7.25 an hour.

The Minnesota action is one of many events around the country to mark the 10th anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase and to shine a public spotlight on lawmakers who refuse to give the nation’s lowest-paid workers a raise.

Kennedy, who is expected to be at the Lumberjack Days Parade, not only has voted consistently against raising the minimum wage—which is at its lowest buying power in more than half a century. He also has voted to raise his own already lucrative salary.

This January, when the ninth congressional pay raise since the last time the minimum wage was raised goes into effect, U.S. representatives and senators will be pocketing $165,200 a year. Meanwhile, unless Congress acts, a full-time worker paid the minimum wage will earn the same as a decade ago, $10,712 a year.

Yesterday, union activists and members of Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, marched at the district office of Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) in Columbus(photo). On Wednesday, about 30 people took the AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise message to Rep. Melissa Hart (R-Pa.) in a rally near her Allison Park office in suburban Pittsburgh.

Pryce and Hart have opposed legislation to raise the $5.15 federal minimum. Last week in Kentucky, more than 100 union members and activists took part in a special minimum wage forum in Louisville.

Meanwhile, the fight to boost the minimum wage at the state level continues to roll, with recent victories in North Carolina and Massachusetts. In addition, America Needs a Raise volunteers are building support for minimum wage ballot initiatives in six states this fall.

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