CWA 1180 - Solidarity Works

Last chance for a minimum wage hike

June 2006

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Urge your U.S. senators and representative to vote to increase the minimum wage and reject any amendments to the legislation that would hurt workers.

Click here to send an email.

Or call Capitol Hill toll-free at 1-888-355-3588; just ask for Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer by name.

We’re coming down to the wire. The Senate is expected to vote this week on a bill increasing the minimum wage from a meager $5.15 to $7.25, but opponents may try to block it with proposals that actually hurt workers. Meanwhile, the Republican House leadership has refused to schedule a vote. We have fought long and hard to give America’s low-wage workers a raise. What happens depends on your action now.

The AFL-CIO expects a Senate vote on increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour as soon as Wednesday, June 21. In the House, where members of Congress just approved a generous increase in their own pay, Republican leaders said they will not allow a vote on the minimum wage increase. Democrats in the House are fighting hard to get a floor vote. “We’re going to have a showdown on the minimum wage,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA).

Congress has not increased the minimum wage since 1997. Yet since 1997, members of Congress voted themselves nine raises—the most recent vote just last week—boosting their salaries to $168,500 a year in 2007. Compare that with the $10,712 earnings of a full-time minimum wage worker. Now add in the billions in tax breaks Congress has handed over to the rich.

It’s time to raise the minimum wage. Tell your senators and representative to vote to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and reject any amendments that would hurt workers.

Adapted from an AFL-CIO Working Families E-activist alert.

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