Tell Congress
It's time to Raise the Minimum Wage to $15/hr Nationwide!
Support the Raise the Wage Act & Accelerate a Compassionate Economic Recovery

• Scroll down, press the mustard "Take Action" button to send a message to your Legislators, let them hear your principled concern on this matter. Personalize the message if you like.

• Between 1973 and 2016, hourly compensation increased just 12.3 percent, while productivity increased 73.7 percent. (PPC’s Souls Of Poor Folk Audit).
• And just this January reports are out that the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population. (Oxfam International.)
• Congress must raise the minimum wage from the poverty-level wage of $7.25/hr to something that helps Americans win back the benefits of productivity gains since the 1970s.

Background:

• Established in 2012 in New York City when fast-food workers walked out of their jobs to demand $15 and a union, the Fight for $15 formed as a grassroots movement of low-wage workers that has now spread from coast to coast. It seeks to undo decades of wage stagnation and growing inequality by raising the wage floor to more robust levels. 
• In 2013, a coalition in NC grew out of several emerging social movements, it avoided partisan and ideological divisions and focused on common moral and democratic values. This coalition culture gave rise to the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival (PPC). (PPC’s Souls Of Poor Folk Audit). UUSJ is an official endorser of this important national economic & social justice coalition and supports the PPC’s 14 Public Policy Priorities to Heal the Nation:  A Moral & Economic Agenda for the First 100 Days, which includes the Fight for $15 legislative request, as well as its A Moral Policy Agenda to Heal and Transform America: The Poor People’s Jubilee Platform. 
• In 2017, the UUA endorsed the Escalating Economic Inequity Statement of Conscience, developed by UUs. And early planning towards the PPC began.
• In 2018, the PPC launched, the UUA also endorsed it. As did UUSJ as part of our commitment to economic justice.  UUs also supported the UUA Dismantle Predatory Medical Care Practices in Prisons and End Prisons for Profit Action of Immediate Witness, building on 2017 concerns.
• In 2019 UUs endorsed the UUA Our Democracy Uncorrupted Statement of Conscience and the Build the Movement for a Green New Deal Action of Immediate Witness continuing to link threads of economic and political policies to justice.

Primary Sources:

• House Ed & Labor Committee - Raise the Wage Act of 2021 - Fact Sheet
• 14 Policy Priorities to Heal the Nation: A Moral and Economic Agenda for the First 100 Days - On behalf of the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival – and its 45 state coordinating committees, thousands of religious leaders, scholars, economists, advocates and hundreds of supporting organizations – insists that the following policies from the Poor People’s Jubilee Platform take precedence during the first 50-100 days of the new administration and 117th Congress.
• Oxfam International - World’s billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people - Global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade.
• Fight For $15 - Increases to the minimum wage to $15/hr is law in eight states: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Florida. Additionally, increases to the minimum wage to $15/hr is law in Seattle and Washington, D.C.
• A Moral Policy Agenda to Heal and Transform America: The Poor People’s Jubilee Platform - From Alaska to Arkansas, the Carolinas to California, Mississippi to Maine, Kansas to Kentucky, the Bronx to the Border, Appalachian hollers to Apache sacred lands, people are coming together to organize their moral outrage against systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy and the false narrative of religious nationalism into a powerful moral fusion movement.
• PPC’s Souls Of Poor Folk Audit - Despite our nation’s abundance, there is not enough for all of us to survive and thrive. This report [the Audit] makes a clear case that the richest nation in the world has sufficient resources to protect the environment and ensure dignified lives for all its people. The problem is a matter of priorities, as more and more of our wealth flows into the pockets of a small but powerful few and into our bloated Pentagon budget. (Page 6)