S 224/HR 965 Increase the Minimum Wage

These House and Senate bills are identical and would raise the federal minimum wage by $1.50 over the course of twelve months from $5.15 per hour to $6.65 per hour. The relationship of the minimum wage to hunger is clear--those who have no money cannot buy food.

Write your senators and legislators and urge them to support the appropriate House and Senate resolutions.

In 1995, the 207th General Assembly approved a major statement entitled, "God's Work In Our Hands: Employment, Community and Christian Vocation" where the Assembly called on Congress and the Administration to "[I]ncrease the minimum wage so as to guarantee a basic level of human dignity for workers and their families, in order to lift them above the poverty level." The 1996 General Assembly stated in a resolution, "Eradicating Poverty and Improving the Human Habitat," that the government "provide incentives for productive employment for the unemployed, including a livable minimum wage…"

Just under seven million workers would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage (5.8% of the workforce). The current minimum wage has been in effect since 1997. At $5.15 an hour for 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, a minimum wage worker makes a total of $10,712, which is nearly $4,000 a year below the poverty level for a family of three.

There is a widely-believed myth that most minimum wage workers are teenagers who work part-time, are being supported by their parents, and only work in order to have money to buy luxuries. The truth could scarcely be more different. Fewer than one-third of the people employed at this level are teenagers, and the majority of those young people are from families with below average incomes. Nearly half of all minimum wage workers are employed full-time.

Increasing the minimum wage is not just a matter of individual income; it is a family issue. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 40% of minimum wage workers are the sole wage earners in their families. Among minimum wage workers, 68% are adults (20 and older). Of the adults, more than 60% are women. Ten percent of all minimum wage workers are single mothers with children to support, and more than twice as many married men and women with children would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. A growing number of such low-wage workers are seniors who are not able to make ends meet on their meager pensions and have returned to work part-time. African American and Hispanic workers are disproportionately represented among those earning minimum wage.

The 1996 welfare law (The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) reduced or eliminated the eligibility of many low-income workers, especially immigrants, for cash benefits and food stamps. The result has been that -- as those who formerly received welfare benefits lose them and move into low-wage jobs -- social service agencies and feeding programs all over the country are seeing increased need for the most basic kinds of assistance to families headed by minimum wage and other low-income workers. The current minimum wage simply does not provide enough income to support a family. Even the increase proposed by Sen. Kennedy would leave a family of three below the poverty line.

Reducing the increase or stretching out the period over which it is implemented would simply force people who are already struggling to survive to stay in that condition longer, while providing little or no benefit to the businesses that such efforts are designed to assist. In fact, many studies of previous increases in the minimum wage have shown that employers benefit from increased stability in the workforce when workers are more satisfied with their wages. These studies indicate that employers are able to absorb some of the costs of wage increases through higher productivity, lower recruiting and training costs, better attendance by workers, and improved morale.

The General Assembly and Background information is taken from the web page of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Washington Office--www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet.htm

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