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UNIONS and the National Poor People’s Campaign (NPPC) have joined forces to press the US government to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour (£10.60) in the run-up to a vote in Congress tomorrow.
Demonstrations took place in at least nine states earlier this week, with protesters carrying signs demanding that legislators raise the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 (£5.15), in stages by 2025.
The NPPC was joined by Service Employees Union president Mary Kay Henry in targeting two wavering Senate Democrats, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.
NPPC co-chairwoman Liz Theoharis said: “If the two defect, in a 50-50 Senate, the minimum wage hike goes down the drain, at least as part of Democratic President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion [£1.34trn] American Recovery Plan Act.”
The economic stimulus package, which will be voted on in Congress tomorrow and then sent to the Senate next week, aims at lifting the country out of a coronavirus-induced depression.
Workers picketed the offices of the sceptical Democrats, telling them: “Low-wage workers across the country are counting on you” to back the minimum wage increase.
NPPC leader William Barber II said: “They’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.”