By Diane Stafford
Kansas City Star, July 24, 2013
On a day when President Barack Obama spoke in favor of a higher minimum wage, a small group of worker advocates in Kansas City issued a similar call.
“We’re telling real people’s stories,” said the Rev. Donna Simon, pastor of St. Mark Hope & Peace Lutheran Church at 3800 Troost Ave. “Most people are surprised to hear about the difficulty of living on $15,000 a year.”
That’s about what a federal minimum-wage earner makes, working 40 hours a week for $7.25 an hour. That’s been the same for four years. The Missouri minimum is slightly higher, $7.35, because of an inflation-adjustment law.
Obama, speaking Wednesday in Galesburg, Ill., said, “Whether you owned a company, swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain — a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and benefits.… “No one who works full time in America should have to live in poverty,” he said, vowing, “I will keep making the case that we need to raise a minimum wage that in real terms is lower than it was when Ronald Reagan took office.”
Simon and others, including members of Jobs With Justice, Communities Creating Opportunity, labor unions and the legal profession, are allied with fast-food and retail workers in the Kansas City area to launch a “Good Jobs for All” campaign.
“We’re glad to have community support,” said Terrance Wise, who works about 70 hours a week at two fast-food jobs. ... After eight years at a Burger King, Wise said he earned $9.30 an hour. He makes $7.45 an hour at his second job, at a Pizza Hut, where he’s worked for two years. His fiancee also works two part-time jobs, “but we still sometimes come up short” to pay all the bills, he said. ...
… Nationally, an organization called Business for Shared Prosperity has begun a petition drive at http://www.businessforafairminimumwage.org/. The organization says that consumer demand drives job creation and that better-paying jobs increase productivity, worker quality and customer satisfaction. ...
Also this week, Hart Research Associates issued survey results that put support for a $10.10 an hour minimum, with built-in cost-of-living adjustments, at 80 percent of American adults.
“Approval is voiced not only by Democrats (92 percent) and low-income adults (83 percent), but also by such traditionally conservative groups as Republicans (62 percent), southern whites (75 percent), and those with incomes over $100,000 (79 percent),” Hart researchers said. “We also find solid support for the $10.10 minimum wage among swing political constituencies, including independents (80 percent) and non-college whites (80 percent).”
Copyright 2013 Kansas City Star