Raise the Minimum Wage to $10 in 2010

Summary

Recent minimum wage raises are too little, too late.
The minimum wage is a poverty wage instead of an anti-poverty wage.
The minimum wage sets the wage floor. A low minimum wage institutionalizes an increasingly low-wage workforce.
A low minimum wage reinforces a growing gap between haves and have-nots.
Workers are also consumers. The long-term fall in worker buying power is one reason we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Raising the minimum wage lifts workers, business and the economy.
$10 in 2010 will break the cycle of too little, too late raises.
$10 in 2010 will make up ground lost in minimum wage buying power since 1968.
$10 in 2010 will bring us closer to the Fair Labor Standards Act “minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers.”
$10 in 2010 will strengthen the eroded foundation under our families, communities and economy.
A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.