‘Domestic Goddess’ Joins Fight for Minimum Wage Increase

by James Parks, Oct 13, 2006

Roseanne Barr

Yesterday, 650 economists, including several Nobel Laureates, laid to rest the myth that raising the minimum wage would hurt the economy. Now, the “domestic goddess” herself has joined the push for decent pay for hard-working Americans.

Roseanne Barr, who grew up in a working-class family in Utah and coined the phrase “domestic goddess,” will host “Seven Days at Minimum Wage” an Oct. 23–30 video blog event sponsored by the AFL-CIO and ACORN in support of minimum wage ballot initiatives in six states.

Barr says she “never felt more hopeful or more connected to people with real ideals and beliefs” than she did when she campaigned in Florida in 2004 to increase that state’s minimum hourly wage by $1. A union member—both of Screen Actors (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)—and a member of ACORN, Barr mobilized Ohio voters in 2005 and has worked in New Orleans to help rebuild neighborhoods devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The video blog (vlog), which can be reached at http://sevendaysatminimumwage.org/ and at YouTube.com beginning Oct. 23, features interviews with seven workers describing life on the federal minimum wage, which has been frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997.

Republican leaders in Congress succeeded in preventing an increase in the nation’s minimum wage this year, but the AFL-CIO and working families plan to keep pushing for a new law in the next Congress. Ten years after Congress approved the last raise, the federal minimum buys less than it did in 1951—fewer groceries, far fewer gallons of gasoline, less medicine and less for rent.

Frustrated by the congressional refusal to understand that $5.15 is too little to live on, the AFL-CIO union movement has spearheaded America Needs a Raise campaign to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level. The campaign has provided momentum to put the issue of raising the minimum wage on the ballot in six states—Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio—Nov. 7.

This year alone, the efforts of union members and their allies resulted in new statutes boosting the minimum wage in 11 states—Arkansas, California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia. Of that number, six, for the first time, increased wages above the federal rate, bringing to 22 states and the District of Columbia where the lowest-paid workers will make more than the federal minimum.

Barr’s early 1980s stand-up comedy routine presented an unglamorized portrayal of the typical American middle-class homemeaker. This led to her own network TV series, which ran from 1988 to 1997.

Get more info from the AFL-CIO and ACORN, which are partnering to raise the minimum wage, by going to the AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise website and ACORN’s Taking It to the States.  

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