[NOW Actions] Senate Minimum Wage Vote This Week

Support NOW's Work |	January 17, 2007	| Tell a Friend

Action Needed Background All NOW Actions House Passes Minimum Wage Bill		Senate Minimum Wage Vote This Week In a stunning victory last week, the House voted to raise the federal minimum wage by a truly bipartisan margin of 315 to 116, and without any tax giveaway to the wealthy and to business interests. The Senate takes up the bill next, where we will have to work hard to win the same results. It could come to the floor this week! Tell your senators to support a "clean" bill to raise the minimum wage and to oppose attempts to add costly tax loopholes and giveaways that will undermine the bill. We need 60+ votes to prevent a filibuster and 67 votes to override a presidential veto. Please make calls to your senators' offices, and send them an email for good measure. Then pass this alert along to everyone you think might help. The voters sent a message to the Senate in the last election and we need to reinforce it: raise the minimum wage, with no sneaky tricks. TAKE ACTION NOW! Because women make up nearly two-thirds of the minimum wage workforce and many are single parents trying to work their way out of poverty, raising the minimum wage is a key initial step toward improving women's overall economic status. This long overdue "raise" for those working at desperately low wages is scheduled for a vote in the Senate in a matter of days. It may come to the floor this week when the Senate takes a break from working on congressional ethics legislation, or it may come next week after a resolution stating the Senate's concern about President Bush's call to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. Action Needed: It is imperative to contact your senators immediately, regardless of party, with an email and a follow-up phone call to their local, state or Washington, D.C., offices. Women and men who are working hard to make ends meet, many working two jobs, deserve a "clean" bill that is not burdened by amendments designed to slow down or defeat attempts to increase the minimum wage. Some of the amendments that have been suggested include expensive and extraneous anti-worker provisions, including tax cuts for business investments and for property leases that will cost taxpayers up to $10 billion over 10 years. TAKE ACTION NOW! Background: RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE IS A MATTER OF FAIRNESS. Members of Congress have raised their own pay $31,000 over the past ten years, but have yet to raise the minimum wage a single cent over the same period. The number of people in poverty has increased by 4.3 million since 2001, the year that President Bush took office. Nearly 36 million people live in poverty, including 13 million children. Among full-time, year-round workers, poverty has doubled since the late 1970s from about 1.3 million workers then to more than 2.6 million workers today. An unacceptably low minimum wage, with lower purchasing power than it did in 1968 (see below) is a key reason there are millions of working poor. MOST MINIMUM WAGE EARNERS ARE NOT TEENAGERS IN AFTER-SCHOOL JOBS, AS OPPONENTS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE. Approximately 7.3 million workers currently are earning the federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. Of these minimum-wage workers, 72% are adults and of these 61% are women. More than a third of those working at minimum wage care for children under the age of 18 and more than 700,000 minimum-wage workers are single mothers. Three quarters of female minimum wage workers are at least 20 years old and 35% of them work full-time. ACTION IS NEEDED NOW. The minimum wage is not indexed for inflation and does not include an annual automatic cost of living raise. Congress is responsible for adjusting the minimum wage to keep up with inflation and to adjust to changes in the purchasing power of the dollar. When Congress fails to act regularly and promptly to provide increases, minimum-wage workers continue to lose buying power. In today's economy the real value of the minimum wage is more than $3.50 below what it was in 1968. For workers to have the same purchasing power they had in 1968, the minimum wage would have to be $8.70 an hour, not $5.15. It is a travesty that a full-time worker at minimum wage is only paid $10,712 - a figure that is more than $5,000 below the official federal poverty line for a family of three. Resources: Passage of the Minimum Wage Bill ? NOW says "It's about time!" A Clean Bill of Wage? (Bill Scher on The Huffington Post) Working Women Need an Increase in the Minimum Wage (PDF) Federal Minimum Wage Remains Unchanged for Ninth Straight Year, Falls to Lowest Level in More than Half a Century Economic Policy Institute's Guide to the Minimum Wage Economic Policy Institute: An Increase in the Minimum Wage is Long Overdue (PDF) AFL-CIO: Minimum Wage by State Take Action NOW!
SUPPORT NOW: Support NOW's Work for Equal Rights | Join NOW | Monthly Giving | Shop Online TAKE ACTION: Get Involved | Find Your Nearest Chapter | Tell a Friend | Learn More LISTS: Unsubscribe, Edit Profile | Subscribe | All Lists