Tom Waring, the Wire
Sen. Art Haywood joined U.S. Rep Boyle at a news conference at the Inter-Faith Food Cupboard to support an increase in the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour.
The lawmakers were accompanied by activists, business owners and community leaders in Montgomery County.
At the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, full-time workers receive only $290 a week in gross pay.
Boyle, who recently supported a federal minimum wage hike to $12 an hour, said, “Raising the wage will grant hard-working Americans increased financial independence, so they will no longer have to rely on an estimated $152.8 billion in public assistance funding just to make ends meet.”
Michael F. O’Connor, of La Barberia, a barber shop located in Jenkintown and Center City Philadelphia, advocates for increasing the minimum wage because of the importance of maintaining employee loyalty and avoiding costly staff turnover.
Rebecca Kelly, coordinator at the food cupboard, said that the number of clients she assists has doubled since she began her work in 2002. Raising the wage would allow many of the cupboard’s clients to buy their own fresh groceries and invest dollars into the community, she said.
JoAnne Sessa, secretary treasurer for SEIU 668, the Pennsylvania social services union, who has spent twenty-six years as a welfare caseworker in the suburbs of Philadelphia, described clients who work two or three part-time jobs.
“For far too many Pennsylvanians, the public conversation in America today is no longer about the American Dream. It’s about survival. And it shouldn’t be,” Sessa said.
Proponents say that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 in Pennsylvania would immediately increase pay for more than 1 million workers, creating an estimated 6,000 jobs across the commonwealth through additional consumer spending.
The last time Pennsylvania saw an increase in the minimum wage was in 2009, when it was raised to the current rate of $7.25 an hour. After adjusting for changes in pricing, the minimum wage is worth less today than it was in 1968.
