Eight million people in the United States are working at or below the hourly $5.15 federal minimum wage. Since 1997, Congress has refused to increase the pay of minimum wage workers—while giving itself nine pay raises in that time.

We're not waiting for Congress. AFL-CIO union members are urging lawmakers to increase their states’ minimum wage and mobilizing to get signatures for state ballot initiatives to take the case for raising the minimum wage directly to voters.

• Read outrageous facts about the minimum wage.
• Sens. Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) have released a report on the minimum wage, Their Fair Share: Creating a Just Economy for Minimum Wage Families (PDF).
• AFL-CIO Now blog: Go for a Real Minimum Wage Bill, Not Phony Republican Bills.
• Read about what isn't a raise in the minimum wage.
• Check out a chart on the minimum wage from 1938 to today from the U.S. Department of Labor website.
• Americans support an increase in the minimum wage: Polls show a broad cross section of Americans support a minimum wage increase.
• Get more information at the AFL-CIO Facts & Stats database.

• Download a handbook on the minimum wage (PDF).
• Economic Policy Institute Minimum Wage Issue Guide.
• Learn about the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign.
• Books: Get Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich’s account of going undercover as an "unskilled" worker, The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 35 Million Americans and more at The Union Shop Online.™