Baxley Fights For Minimum Wage Increase
Introduces Workers Impacted by Raising the Minimum Wage
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Aug. 30 - Democracitc Party nominee for governor Lucy Baxley held a rally in Birmingham today and vowed to lead the charge to help the tens of thousands of Alabamians who would benefit from a $1 an hour increase in the minimum wage.
“Working people deserve to earn a moral wage,” Baxley said . “Governor Riley said he doesn’t know anyone still paying the minimum wage. Well, here are some hard working people who need that $1 raise, and I’m going to make sure they get it.”
Baxley was joined shortly after the event by a number of workers who would feel the impact of an increase in the minimum wage, a group that Governor Bob Riley has apparently never met.
An August 6th story in the Cullman Times quoted Riley as saying, “I don’t know of anyone who is still paying minimum wage, even in the rural areas.”
“I will lead the charge to increase Alabama’s minimum wage because people who put in an honest day’s work should earn enough to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads,” Baxley said “It is morally unacceptable that anyone working 40 hours a week still earns $5,000 less than the federal poverty line for a family of four.
"Study after study shows that raising the minimum wage helps low-income working families without negatively impacting employment, and we as leaders have a duty to fight for this increase,” she said.
Baxley has proposed raising Alabama’s minimum wage by $1 above the federal minimum to $6.15 by 2007.
Since 1997, 18 states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wage above the federal level, with seven more considering the issue on the ballot in November, and eight state legislatures considering the issue during 2006 sessions. Only six states, including Alabama, have no state minimum wage law on the books.
In 2004, 562 economists, including four Nobel Laureates, signed a letter agreeing that “modest increases in state minimum wages in the range of $1 to $2 can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.”
The 1999 Economic Report of the President expressed that “the weight of the evidence suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment.”
Thirty-five percent of workers who receive a minimum wage are their families’ sole earners. Sixty-one percent are women, and almost one-third of those women are raising children. More than 80 percent of minimum wage earners are over the age of 20, with half between the ages of 25 and 54 years-old.
Letter from 562 Economists (pdf)