For 10 years, House Republicans refused to vote on raising the minimum wage, and millions of workers suffered and struggled earning just $5.15 an hour. They watched the value of that $5.15 shrink and shrink year by year.
In the first hours of business of the 110th Congress and with Democrats back at the helm, the House voted 315-116 Wednesday to give what economists say could be as many as 13 million low-wage workers a raise.
Six of Minnesota\'s representatives in the U.S. House supported the bill. Republican Jim Ramstad joined Democrats Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Jim Oberstar, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz in voting yes. Republicans Michele Bachmann and John Kline voted against the wage increase.
H.R. 2, introduced by George Miller (D-Calif.), would provide a $2.10-an-hour raise over two years, with no special-interest giveaways to corporations that already have reaped tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Bush administration and the previously Republican-controlled Congress.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the House vote shows "Our new Congress is listening to what working Americans said last November. It heard their call for change and is working to right a big wrong and pass a minimum wage increase."
The decade of inaction on the minimum wage eroded its real buying power to the lowest point in more than 50 years and brings a full-time minimum wage worker just $206 a week, $10,400 a year, far below the poverty line for even a small family. The increases in H.R. 2 mean a worker will bring home an additional $4,400 a year. That figure translates into 15 months of groceries or two years of health care for a family of three, according to testimony last year before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Shortly before the House vote, Miller, Sweeney, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Mass.) and others urged the Senate to turn back business tax cut giveaways and pass a clean minimum wage bill.
Unions, faith groups, community organizations and many others conducted a call-in campaign this week to insure passage of the bill in the House. Focus now shifts to the Senate.
Adapted from an article on the AFL-CIO news site, http://blog.aflcio.org/
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For 10 years, House Republicans refused to vote on raising the minimum wage, and millions of workers suffered and struggled earning just $5.15 an hour. They watched the value of that $5.15 shrink and shrink year by year.
In the first hours of business of the 110th Congress and with Democrats back at the helm, the House voted 315-116 Wednesday to give what economists say could be as many as 13 million low-wage workers a raise.
Six of Minnesota\’s representatives in the U.S. House supported the bill. Republican Jim Ramstad joined Democrats Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Jim Oberstar, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz in voting yes. Republicans Michele Bachmann and John Kline voted against the wage increase.
H.R. 2, introduced by George Miller (D-Calif.), would provide a $2.10-an-hour raise over two years, with no special-interest giveaways to corporations that already have reaped tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Bush administration and the previously Republican-controlled Congress.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the House vote shows "Our new Congress is listening to what working Americans said last November. It heard their call for change and is working to right a big wrong and pass a minimum wage increase."
The decade of inaction on the minimum wage eroded its real buying power to the lowest point in more than 50 years and brings a full-time minimum wage worker just $206 a week, $10,400 a year, far below the poverty line for even a small family. The increases in H.R. 2 mean a worker will bring home an additional $4,400 a year. That figure translates into 15 months of groceries or two years of health care for a family of three, according to testimony last year before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Shortly before the House vote, Miller, Sweeney, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D- Mass.) and others urged the Senate to turn back business tax cut giveaways and pass a clean minimum wage bill.
Unions, faith groups, community organizations and many others conducted a call-in campaign this week to insure passage of the bill in the House. Focus now shifts to the Senate.
Adapted from an article on the AFL-CIO news site, http://blog.aflcio.org/