Working America Gets a Raise!
Thanks to a nation-wide effort of workers, unions, and many other allies who came together and pressured lawmakers, working America finally got a long, overdue raise. The federal minimum wage now stands at $5.85, up 70 cents from $5.15 where it had been for a decade, and will provide full-time minimum-wage earners with an additional $1,500 annually.
The raise is the first of three increases Congress approved this years that will bring the rate to $7.25 an hour in 2009.
One of the first acts the new Democratic House majority wanted to pass in January of this year was a bill boosting the wage increase to $7.25 right away, without tax breaks for business or changes to labor laws. Just a quick, overdue raise for hard-working yet underpaid men and women. Unfortunately that bill enraged Republican senators and set the stage for more than four months of Republicans holding the bill hostage. There were filibusters and schemes to give big corporate tax breaks to businesses.
The Senate finally passed the bill on May 24, with a trimmed-down package of tax breaks, part of a supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. The three-year federal minimum wage hike will increase to $6.55 in 2008, and then to $7.25 in 2009.
While Republicans, with the backing of the Bush White House managed to keep a cap on the minimum wage for many years, state legislators and voters went to work. Today, 31 states and the District of Columbia have higher minimum wages than the federal level.
The federal increase will no doubt ease some of the burden on working people, but minimum wage workers are still forced to live in poverty and the American Dream remains out of reach. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) has proposed making the nation’s minimum wage a living wage, somewhere around $9.60 an hour, the official poverty-level wage.
 |
 |
