Today marks the fourth anniversary of the last increase in the federal minimum wage, on July 24, 2009. ... Rev. Stephen Copley, Director of the Arkansas Interfaith Alliance and chair of the national nonpartisan Let Justice Roll Living Wage Coalition said: “It is immoral that the minimum wage is worth less, adjusted for inflation, than the over $10 value it had in 1968, the year the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis while fighting for living wages. We cannot wait another year. People are suffering as they make the decision to buy groceries, purchase their medicines OR pay their utility bills. It is...
Press Releases
Sep 3 2012
Rev. Stephen Copley,
Director of the Arkansas Interfaith Alliance and chairman of the national nonpartisan Let Justice Roll Living Wage Coalition, Copley said: “Our motto at Let Justice Roll is ‘A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.’ Today’s minimum wage is a poverty wage, not a living wage. At $7.25 an hour, just $15,080 a year, the minimum wage is set so low that growing numbers of hardworking men and women turn to food banks and homeless shelters to try and fill the gaping hole in their wages. It is immoral that the minimum wage is worth less, adjusted for inflation, than the over $10 value it had in 1968, the year Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in...
Jul 23 2012
Excerpt: Ariel Jacobson is senior associate in the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Economic Justice Program, an international human rights organization based in Cambridge, Mass. and is on the board on Let Justice Roll. She said today: “Raising the minimum wage is an economic necessity and a moral issue that should weigh on our national conscience. The least we can do is to make up lost ground and bring the minimum wage closer to the adequate living standard it was...
Jan 18 2011
Annapolis –Progressive Maryland today launched Raise Maryland, a major legislative and grassroots campaign to increase Maryland’s minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour -- the federal...
Jul 23 2010
July 24 is the anniversary of last year’s raise in the federal minimum wage and no new increases are scheduled. The minimum wage is so low today at $7.25 an hour, says the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, that it’s lower than the minimum wage of 1956, which was $8.02 adjusted for inflation. 1956 is 54 years ago.
The minimum wage sets the wage floor, affecting workers up the ladder. Today, four out of six occupations employing the largest number of workers nationwide -- including retail salespersons, cashiers and food preparation and serving workers -- have a median wage that is lower than the minimum wage of 1968, adjusted for inflation (...
Jul 22 2009
Minimum wage raises have been so little, so late that even
with the increase to $7.25 on July 24, workers will still make less than the $7.93
minimum wage of 1956, adjusting for inflation. It would take $9.92 to match the buying power of the minimum wage of
1968. That's why the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign says the minimum
wage raise on July 24 is good, but not good enough.
"It can get very difficult when you have to decide which bill to pay each month," says Anjail Hafeeza of New Jersey. "I'm constantly scrambling to keep from getting evicted or have...
Jul 15 2009
When the federal minimum wage rises from $6.55 to $7.25 an
hour on July 24, the national Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign will
celebrate – and call for another increase to $10 in 2010.
Atlanta Worker Marilynn Winn
...
Jul 9 2009
As the July 24 increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 approaches, the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign can provide you with workers, advocates, businesspeople and other spokespeople in favor of raising the minimum wage:
- Low-wage workers who will get a raise on July 24;
- Business owners who favor raising the minimum wage;
- Faith leaders who see poverty wages as a moral outrage, including Rev. Paul Sherry;
- Leaders of current or successful past campaigns to raise the minimum wage in Tennessee, New York, Georgia, Arkansas, Kansas and elsewhere;
- Minimum wage expert Holly Sklar, author of "A Just Minimum Wage: Good...
May 1 2009
"Let
Justice Roll's state-level successes in 2006 convinced us that we
could succeed in Kansas, too. And we hope that others, elsewhere,
will draw similar conclusions from our success. It might seem, at
first glance, that raising the Kansas minimum wage would have been
unusually difficult in the current economic downturn. But actually,
this may have helped us, since the needs of vulnerable and low-wage
workers became clearer than ever. And raising the minimum wage is a
form of economic stimulus."
-- David Smith and Heidi Zeller, Kansas Action Network & Let
Justice Roll.
Kansas will no longer have the nation's lowest state minimum wage...
Kansas will no longer have the nation's lowest state minimum wage...
Jan 13 2009
Living Wage Events Link MLK Dream to Ending Poverty Wages
Washington, DC, The leaders of 15 denominations and national faith organizations are among the inaugural signers of Let Justice Roll’s letter in support of a $10 federal minimum wage in 2010. Four hundred faith leaders from all 50 states have endorsed $10 in 2010 and more are signing on every day.
Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), signed the letter in support of $10 in 2010, saying, “National wage policies are moral documents that express the values of our country. A minimum wage closer to a living wage better...
