Patsy T. Mink: “Mr. Speaker, this matter of raising minimum wage is a matter of simple justice. We have heard throughout the last year…”

“Mr. Speaker, this matter of raising minimum wage is a matter of simple justice. We have heard throughout the last year and a half about how important it is for people to work. In fact, we have passed a welfare reform bill, so-called, which will require work because work is an important ethic that ought to be encouraged. And while we talk about work, we always say work should be rewarded. So we have come now to this legislation which is an attempt to pay fair wages, to make it profitable for people to work at the lowest income in our country. People who work at minimum wage, $4.25 now, all they are going to receive after a year is $5.15 an hour; not much more than what they get, but a substantial amount for those people who are in the lowest income in our society. And I have met many tens of thousands of workers who are earning minimum wage in my district. Mr. Speaker, I was appalled when once the Labor Department issued the unemployment statistics, everywhere we had been told that the economy was down and that the tax collections were down. And yet at the same time our unemployment figures remained stable. They remained stable because in my community, people have to work three or two jobs just to keep their families together.”