I SUPPORT A MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE
For delivery to the 111th Congress of the United
States of America.
Dear Members of Congress:
As leaders of our faith communities, 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. It 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 for
inflation, the much-needed raise to $7.25 in July 2009 still leaves
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, faith leaders 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,
|