I SUPPORT THE MINIMUM WAGE INCREASING TO A LIVING WAGE
For delivery to the new Congress in January, 2009.
Dear Members of Congress:
As people of faith, we call on the 111th Congress to
raise the minimum wage and join us in bringing needed economic security to our families,
our communities and our country.
An adequate minimum wage is a bedrock moral value
for our nation. Where the Congress sets the minimum wage reflects whether our society truly
believes that workers are human beings with inherent dignity, inalienable rights and basic needs
such as food, shelter and health care.
For too long, the minimum wage has not provided
even a minimally adequate standard of living. We experience the results in our communities.
Across the United States, a growing number of hardworking men and women are turning to our
food banks, soup kitchens and homeless shelters to feed and house themselves and their children
because their wages are too low.
It is immoral that people work full time but have to
choose between paying the rent and paying for food, paying for childcare or paying for healthcare. I
t is immoral that some are paid so little their children go without necessities while others are paid
so much their grandchildren will live in luxury without having to work at all. A job should
keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.
Between September 1997 and July
2007, we experienced the longest period in history without a raise in the minimum wage. Adjusting f
or inflation, the scheduled raise to $7.25 in July 2009 will leave workers about where they were in
1997 and far behind 1968, when the minimum wage reached its peak value of about $10 in 2008
dollars.
It is immoral that the minimum wage is worth less now than it was the year Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis while fighting for living wages for sanitation workers.
The eroded value of the minimum wage has reinforced growing inequality, which has given the
richest 1 percent of Americans a greater share of our nation's income than any year since 1928.
This has undermined our communities, our economy and our democracy. Prophetic voices like Dr.
King and others throughout the ages have called for justice for the underprivileged and poorest in
society.
We, diverse people of faith from all across America, call on Congress to raise
the minimum wage to $10 in 2010.
+ $10 in 2010 is necessary if we are
to make up the ground lost in real wages since 1968.
+$10 in 2010 will bring
us closer to the goal of the "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general
well-being of workers" articulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum
wage 70 years ago.
+$10 in 2010 will bring us closer to the day when all workers
are paid a living wage.
As Adam Smith wrote in >The Wealth of Nations in 1776,
"It is but equity . . . that those who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have
such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and
lodged."
The Golden Rule teaches us, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you." We call on the 111th Congress to raise the minimum wage and join with us in ending
poverty wages.
Sincerely,
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