[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S7161]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S7161]]
            60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, sixty years ago today, President 
Roosevelt signed into law an historic piece of legislation. The Fair 
Labor Standards Act established a number of basic protections for 
workers, including one of the great landmarks of American law--the 
federal minimum wage.
  President Roosevelt called that Act ``the most far-reaching, far-
sighted program for the benefit of workers ever adopted here or in any 
other country.''
  And he was right. 700,000 workers got a raise in 1938. The minimum 
wage helped pull the country out of the Great Depression. And, in the 
decades that followed, it helped to lift millions of working families 
out of poverty.
  Our standard of living has improved steadily and dramatically since 
1938. And, for thirty years, the minimum wage kept pace with those 
improvements.
  But the last thirty years have seen an about-face. The real value of 
the minimum wage has dropped steeply since 1968. To have the purchasing 
power today that it had thirty years age, the minimum wage would have 
to be $7.38 and hour--40% higher than its current level of $5.15.
  Working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, minimum wage workers today 
earn just $10,700 a year--$2,900 below the poverty level for a family 
of three. In the midst of what many experts are calling ``the best 
economy ever,'' 12 million Americans are earning poverty-level wages.
  For them survival is the daily goal. If they work hard enough and 
their hours are long enough, they can make ends meet--but only barely. 
They don't have time for their families. They can't participate in 
activities with their children. They can't afford to buy birthday 
presents or do the countless other things that most of us take for 
granted.
  We know who minimum wage workers are. They are teachers' aides and 
home health aides. They care for our children in child care centers and 
our parents and grandparents in nursing homes. They sell us goods at 
the corner store, and serve us coffee at the local coffee shop.
  They clean office buildings in communities across the country.
  They are workers like Valerie Bell, a custodian for a contractor in 
Baltimore, who told us what a higher minimum wage means in human terms. 
For workers and their families, it means far more than dollars and 
cents. It means dignity. As she said, ``We no longer have to receive 
food stamps or other social services to supplement our incomes. We can 
fix up our homes and invest in our neighborhoods. We can spend more at 
the local grocery store.
  We can work two low-wage jobs, rather than three low-wage jobs, and 
spend more time with our families. Our utilities won't be cut off. We 
can pay the medical bills we accumulated from not having health 
benefits in our jobs.''
  That's why we say now is the time to raise the minimum wage. Our 
proposal will raise the minimum wage by 50 cents on January 1, 1999 and 
50 cents more on January 1, 2000--bringing the minimum wage to $6.15 an 
hour at the turn of the century. Twelve million working families across 
the country deserve no less.
  Our Republican friends just cut capital gains taxes for the 
wealthiest Americans by more than $300 million over the next five 
years. Yet they oppose giving minimum wage workers an additional $1 an 
hour. ``Let them eat cake,'' they say.
  Plums for the rich and crumbs for everyone else is the wrong 
priority. We need to do more for hard-working families in communities 
across America, and we can do more. We can raise the minimum wage. And 
with the strong support of President Clinton and Democrats in the 
Senate and House, we will raise it.
  I intend to offer the minimum wage on the first available legislation 
after the July 4th recess. No one who works for a living should have to 
live in poverty.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 
anniversary of the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the 
establishment of the federal minimum wage. For sixty years, this law 
has provided hardworking Americans a promise--a promise that, in this 
country, we value the labor of all of our workers.
  Over the last several decades, we have kept that promise by 
periodically raising the minimum wage. We have passed legislation six 
times since 1955 to ensure that this vital safety net is not just 
symbolic, but, instead, a true standard of decency. It is time to do 
this again.
  Just like investors who expect a fair return for the money they put 
into the stock market, workers should expect a fair return for the 
labor they invest. In today's thriving economy, investors have gotten 
back more than they could have hoped for. Those making minimum wage, 
however, have seen a declining return on their investment. An hour of 
work does not give back what it used to.
  In 1997 dollars, the minimum wage of today is more than two dollars 
less than what it was in the late 1960s. Our parents' generation had a 
minimum wage equivalent to $7.33. Now our children--despite an 
unparalleled booming economy--are faced with a minimum wage that places 
them below the poverty level.
  That, Mr. President, is outrageous. People who work forty hour weeks 
year round, trying to provide for themselves and their families, are 
finding that their efforts are just not enough.
  Perhaps, most troubling of all, this low minimum wage is having a 
disproportionately devastating effect on working moms. Sixty-two 
percent of all minimum wage workers are women, many the sole heads of 
their households. Where do these moms turn when they can't provide for 
their hungry children?
  Many have been forced to seek outside assistance. Last year, a US 
Conference of Mayors study indicated that eighty-six percent of cities 
reported an increased demand for emergency food assistance. Thirty-
eight percent of those people seeking food at soup kitchens and 
shelters were employed. This is an increase of fifteen percent since 
1994.
  This new trend is alarming. In a nation as great as ours, in a time 
as prosperous as this one, we should guarantee the American people 
that, if they are willing to work, then they will be able to live off 
of their income; they will be able to feed their children; they will be 
able to afford clothing and shelter, and they will be able to live 
their lives with basic dignity and fair compensation.
  I call upon my colleagues to raise the minimum wage so that we can 
help millions of working people lift themselves up from poverty. 
Opponents of the minimum wage claim that we cannot afford to do this. 
But, for the most vulnerable in America's workforce, the truth is that 
we simply cannot afford not to.

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