The Catching up to 1968 Act of 2012 (H.R. 5901) is a piece of legislation introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. Its object is to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour, an amount that may sound frightening to businesses, but apparently they do manage to adjust. Jackson points out that no job loss has been shown to result from reasonable increases in the minimum wage.
The amount is only one of the bill’s four prongs. The raise would happen immediately, or what passes for immediately in public life, two months after the enactment of the legislation. Then, after a year, the minimum wage would be tied to the Consumer Price Index. And there is a special provision for people like restaurant workers:
For workers earning their living on the basis of tips, the cash wage paid to such an employee is to be 70% of the minimum wage when the law takes effect, but in no case less than $5.50 an hour, adjusted annually as necessary thereafter.
Jackson notes that states and communities can always raise the minimum wage in their area, but it doesn’t happen very often. Ten states, he tells us, have exercised their autonomy by indexing the minimum wage to inflation, so that’s a good sign. And 70% of the American people, according to a recent poll, believe the minimum wage needs to be higher.
On the right-hand side of the Time for a Raise page is an impressive list of representatives who are co-sponsors. The information gives specifics on the position of organizations and public figures whose opinions about the minimum wage are often sought out:
The AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza, civil rights organizations, Ralph Nader, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and many others have all supported raising it and indexing it. Even Rick Santorum (until recently) and Mitt Romney believed in raising the minimum wage and Mr. Romney wanted to index it to inflation.
For encouraging him to introduce the legislation, Jackson extends special appreciation and thanks to Nader. In his argument for the raising the minimum wage, Jackson (like many others) references the unfairness of the huge gap between compensation for executives and workers. CEOs and all those other “Os” could help a lot by taking voluntary pay cuts.
As House the Homeless blog has often discussed, the Universal Living Wage (ULW), as written up by Richard R. Troxell, shares a similar motivation, although it takes a different approach. The ULW accomplishes the same benefits, and adds more. It doesn’t take a sociology professor or an economist to recognize that the cost of living is different in different places around the United States. To speak of “the economy” is misleading, because we are a nation of at least 1,000 economies. One size does not fit all. Richard says:
Raising the FMW to $10.00 an hour will not get one minimum wage worker off the streets of Washington DC the day it becomes law-far from it. At the same time, $10.00 an hour will seriously hurt small business in rural America.
Harm to small businesses can be reduced by costing them money only in communities where the economy can handle it. Harm can also be reduced by planning for change to take place over a 10-year period. If the increase is eased into, businesses will know what to expect and be able to budget for it. Richard asks:
What’s wrong with spreading out the solution of this problem over 10 years if it took 50 years for it to be created? Especially, if in the end, it solves the Wage Issue Problem for all time and ensures that a person working 40 hours in a week will finally be able to afford basic: food, clothing and shelter, (including utilities) wherever that work is done throughout the United States… Remember, minimum wage jobs are the last bastion of purely American jobs. These jobs and these workers cannot be outsourced. Our workers deserve better and our employers deserve to be respected.
By a not-so-strange coincidence, Ralph Nader has also sat down with Richard to discuss the Universal Living Wage. Back in the day, both men worked for economic justice in the streets of Philadelphia, alongside the esteemed Max Weiner, founder of the Consumer Education and Protective Association (CEPA), and the Consumer Party.
Catching up has been the policy behind the federal minimum wage for far too long. “The Catching up to 1968 Act of 2012” is a cute title — one might say a “catchy” title — but, really, is that the best we can aspire to, going backwards nearly half a century? If we always go less than the distance to the goal of exiting poverty, then how long does it take us to reach that goal? The answer is, we never do. The result is a 10,000,000 people pool of economically enslaved full-time workers who remain vulnerable to the disaster of falling into economic homelessness.
And even in the best case, “catching up” would not bring us back to where we were in that golden past. Jackson noted that the proposed increase “doesn’t fully equal the purchasing power of the minimum wage in 1968 — which today would be closer to $11 per hour.” Even if “catching up” becomes law, the American worker will not be able to buy as many loaves of bread with an hour’s pay as could be bought for an hour’s wages back in 1968.
Please visit to learn more about the Universal Living Wage and the ways in which you can participate to make it a reality.
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Source: “The Catching up to 1968 Act of 2012,” timeforaraise.org, 06/06/12
Image by cliff1066, used under its Creative Commons license.
