By John J. Sweeney
Our members of Congress will work a grand total of 97 days in Washington, D.C., this year for their $165,000 annual salaries. I’m Irish and proud of it—but even I don’t take a week off for St. Patrick’s Day, as they did.
That’s quite a deal—it comes out to $1,701 a day. At that rate, a member of Congress would only have to work six days to earn what a minimum-wage worker makes in a year.
Congress has given itself eight pay raises, worth $31,600, since it last raised the minimum wage in 1997. The congressional raises alone are worth nearly three times the entire annual pay for full-time work at the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.
Republicans in Congress repeatedly have blocked efforts to raise the minimum wage. As a result, activists have been fighting—and winning—battles to increase state minimum wages. Seeing the public disgust at a minimum wage that is at its lowest level ever in real dollar terms, even governors and state legislators normally hostile to workers’ issues—California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michigan’s Republican-controlled Senate, for example—are working to raise the state wage floors.
It’s great to have action in the states, and we’ll keep fighting there, but a decent minimum wage should be the right of every worker everywhere in this country. No one who works full time should be unable to lift a child or two above the poverty level. Leaving minimum-wage workers in that situation is immoral and just plain wrong.
Minimum-wage workers are doing some of the hardest, most-needed and most-dangerous work in America, with minimal or nonexistent benefits and unforgiving schedules that can mean job loss because of a sick child or transportation breakdown.
Please join me and other working family activists today in demanding that Congress act now to raise the minimum wage. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act, and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and John Barrow (D-Ga.) have introduced similar legislation in the House. I urge you to help get this legislation passed by signing on as a citizen co-sponsor by clicking here. I hope you also will call your senators and representative in their home district offices or in Washington, D.C., at 202-224-3121.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps, putting an additional $4,370 a year into the pockets of full-time workers. That’s enough to pay an average of nine months of rent, 18 months of heat and electricity or a full year’s tuition at a community college.
Members of Congress cry foul when someone talks about their light work schedule on Capitol Hill. They have to spend time in their districts, hearing from constituents, they say, not acknowledging their frantic fundraising for November’s elections. Contact them today by phone and e-mail and tell them they need to stay put in Washington long enough to do some decent fundraising for minimum-wage workers.
