THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA
www.cagreens.org
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Contact: Sara Amir, spokesperson 310.270-7106 saraamir@earthlink.net
Pat Driscoll 916.320-6430 pat@sonicfrog.com
Susan King 415.823-5524 funking@mindspring.com
Beth Moore Haines 530.277-0610 beth@ncws.com
Minimum wage legislation to provide aid for
'working poor'
SACRAMENTO (September 7, 2005) - While noting it
doesn't come close to a living wage, the Green Party of California
applauded the Senate's passage of legislation raising the state's
minimum wage - and urged the governor to sign it to give urgent relief
to the state's "working poor."
AB 48, authored by Assembly person Sally Lieber,
D-Mt. View, goes to the governor after the Senate passed it today. It
was approved by the Assembly 49-30 in late June.
The measure raises the minimum wage to $7.75 over
two years, and indexes it for inflation annually. There hasn't been an
increase in the minimum wage for the state's lowest paid workers since
2002.
"Nearly 80 percent of low-wage workers are
people of color and the majority of minimum wage earners are women.
While the cost of everything goes up, from housing to food to
gasoline, these workers haven't had an increase in three years,"
said Susan King, a spokesperson for the GPCA.
The Greens are also quick to point out that even
with the modest increase called for in Lieber's measure, the wage paid
California's lowest-paid workers is not even close to the minimum wage
way back in 1968. To equal that, workers today would have to be paid
somewhere around $9 an hour.
"Minimum wage workers are our working poor,
and they continue to be exploited. Today's workers need to be paid a
living wage, and $7.75 an hour or even $9 an hour doesn't come close.
Shame on lawmakers who don't support this legislation, and the
governor if he chooses not to support it," said Pat Driscoll, a
GPCA spokesperson and treasurer with Californians for Fair Wages (CFW).
