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20 April 2012

Grantees Push for a Living Wage for All

As U.S. lawmakers face growing pressure to raise the minimum wage, Jen Kern of the National Employment Law Project, a Ford grantee, tells The New York Times that paying workers a higher minimum wage would benefit the economy as a whole. The Times cites research from another grantee, the Economic Policy Institute, suggesting that raising the federal minimum wage to $9.80 would lift pay for more than 28 million Americans, increase the gross domestic product by more than $25 billion and create the equivalent of more than 100,000 full-time jobs. These and other grantees of our Ensuring Good Jobs and Access to Services initiative have been leaders in advocating for a living wage for all workers.

Published in The New York Times

Raising the Floor on Pay

April 9, 2012 By Steven Greenhouse

As the nation‘s economy slowly recovers and income inequality emerges as a crucial issue in the presidential campaign, lawmakers are facing growing pressure to raise the minimum wage, which was last increased at the federal level to $7.25 an hour in July 2009.

State legislators in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and elsewhere are pushing to raise the minimum wage above the federal level in their own states, arguing that $7.25 an hour is too meager for anyone to live on.

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