Minimum Wage Bill up in Senate—Go for the Real Thing, Not Phony Republican

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/?p=861

Minimum Wage Bill up in Senate—Go for the Real Thing, Not Phony Republican Bills

It’s showdown time on the minimum wage in the Senate this week. Senators will chose between a real minimum wage increase of $2.10 an hour and a phony alternative that’s not only smaller but likely laden with “poison pills” that would hurt workers.

The Senate action follows last week’s House Ways and Means Committee approval of a minimum wage hike that Republican leaders are keeping from a vote. Also last week, members of Congress voted for their ninth pay raise since the minimum wage was last raised in 1997, boosting congressional pay by nearly $35,000 a year since that last minimum wage increase.

It’s been 10 years since Congress passed the last minimum wage raise in the summer of 1996. Minimum wage workers have been earning $5.15 an hour since 1997 when the wage went into effect—a wage that pays a full-time worker just $10,712 a year, far below the poverty level for even a small family.

In the Senate, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who long has championed raising the minimum wage, will offer a minimum wage bill (S. 1062) that raises the wage by $2.10 an hour to $7.25. Kennedy is offering the minimum wage increase as an amendment to the Defense Department Authorization bill (S. 2766).

As they have in the past, Senate Republicans are expected to respond with a poison pill- proposal. Last year, when Kennedy brought up a similar increase in the minimum wage, Republicans countered with a proposal to raise the minimum wage by $1.10 an hour—while reducing overtime pay for workers by replacing the 40-hour workweek with an 80-hour, two-week work period. The proposal also would have eliminated wage and hour protections for more than 7 million workers and actually lowered wages for millions of workers who earn tips.

Meanwhile in the House, Republican leaders are blocking a vote on a minimum wage increase the House Ways and Means Committee approved last week as part of an appropriations bill that was scheduled to come to a vote this week.

Rep. George Miller’s (D-Calif.) bill to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour has been bottled up in Education and the Workforce Committee by Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) who has vowed to keep it from a vote.

House Democrats have promised to force their own showdown on the issue.

Click here to urge your senators and representative to raise the minimum wage and oppose any phony bill that would hurt workers.

Read 10 facts about the minimum wage and click here to download a handbook about the minimum wage.

With congressional Republican leaders and the Bush administration refusing to consider any meaningful minimum wage increase, the battle to raise the pay of millions of low-wage workers also is being waged and won on the state level in the AFL-CIO’s America Needs a Raise campaign.

Take a look at the latest in California and Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and North Carolina and Missouri.

by Mike Hall