Re: Call them the Religious Left - Let Justice Roll/Minimum
nimh wrote:Quote:Pastors Push Living Wage as Election Issue
Abid Aslam, OneWorld US
Tue Oct 3
Call them the Religious Left: Church leaders are seeking to rally ''values voters'' ahead of next month's elections in a nationwide crusade to raise the minimum wage.
The Let Justice Roll campaign, a congregation of some 80 religious and community organizations including the National Council of Churches USA, said in a statement it plans to hold hundreds of rallies, workshops, religious services, and prayer breakfasts across the country to urge state and federal officials and candidates to boost working families' fortunes.
So-called Living Wage Days events this month will seek to pass minimum wage ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, and Ohio.
"A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it," said Rev. Paul Sherry, anti-poverty program coordinator at the National Council of Churches and former president of the United Church of Christ.
The issue appears to be gaining political traction. October's events come on the heels of state minimum wage increases in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
Campaign members cited a recent poll that they said showed nine out of 10 Americans support a higher minimum wage. They added that they would lead efforts next year to pass state wage hikes in New Hampshire and Tennessee.
Congressional Democrats also are seeking to capitalize on the minimum wage among a raft of bread-and-butter issues they say the Republican-controlled legislature has neglected.
''We haven't had time to increase the minimum wage, to cut the cost of student loans for America's college students, to lower prescription drug prices, to roll back tax breaks for big oil," Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, was quoted as saying Friday before legislators broke for an intense period of campaigning ahead of the Nov. 7 midterm election.
To be sure, members of Let Justice Roll have voiced outrage at the meager earnings of millions of Americans at the bottom end of the labor market. But their campaign also seeks to present faith-based voters with an alternative to the Religious Right agenda.
''We've long seen scorecards from the Christian Coalition and others show how members of Congress vote on so-called social issues but not on help for the poor, which the Bible mandates hundreds of times,'' said Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
''Millions of values voters care about fair wages for the people who do some of the hardest, most important jobs in our society--from childcare teachers we entrust with our children to healthcare aides we entrust with our parents,'' Edgar said.
The federal minimum wage rose to $5.15 per hour in 1997 but has lost more than one fifth of its value since then, campaigners said. Today's minimum pay buys less than it did in 1950, they added.
At the federal level, the campaign wants Congress to raise the minimum wage to at least $7.25 per hour and to oppose measures that would weaken existing eligibility, tipped worker coverage, overtime and other labor protections, or link the minimum wage to tax cuts for the wealthy.
''Congressional leaders are holding the minimum wage hostage to a tax cut for wealthy heirs,'' said Johanna Chao Rittenburg, economic justice program manager at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
An estimated 14.9 million workers--11 percent of the work force--would benefit were the minimum hourly wage raised from $5.15 to $7.25 by 2008, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, DC-based think tank funded by business and labor philanthropies.
Of those workers, 6.6 million now earn less than $7.25 and would be directly affected by an increase. The additional 8.3 million workers earning slightly above the minimum also would benefit. That is because even though a raise is not legally mandated for workers earning a few more dollars than the proposed new minimum wage, many employers raise their pay anyway to preserve internal wage structures. This makes raising the minimum wage an important part of a broader strategy to end poverty, EPI researchers said.
Employers' groups and economists critical of proposed wage hikes have countered that such measures can condemn small businesses to insolvency but EPI researchers said there was no evidence that the 1997 wage gain had led to job losses.
State and municipal officials have commissioned their own studies even as they have enacted living wage measures.
In September, University of New Mexico researchers told members of the Santa Fe City Council that the municipality's two-year-old experiment with pay hikes had neither hit businesses with higher costs nor hurt low-skilled workers, contrary to employers' fears that higher wages would force businesses to cut jobs or relocate away from the city.
Council members commissioned the study after adopting a measure two years ago that required employers with more than 25 workers to pay $8.50 per hour, above the state and federal minimum of $5.15. Santa Fe raised its floor to $9.50 per hour in January and expects to raise it further, to $10.50, in 2008.
Whether the moves have provided significant succor to workers or the city's economy remained to be seen, the daily Santa Fe New Mexican quoted the researchers as saying.
I'm by no means a student of the Bible, so can someone who agrees with Rev. Bob Edgar point out to me where it calls for the state to impose laws concerning what an employer must pay his or her employees? I accept the argument that
the Bible mandates hundreds of times that believers must help the poor and those less fortunate than themselves. Seems like a good thing to mandate too.
I would be more sympathetic towards Rev. Bob if he were laying out what he and his followers have personally and through their church done for the poor and challenged Christians on the right to compare what they have done.
I have no problem whatsoever with Rev Bob and his friends advancing a liberal agenda that they may have come to support through their faith and religion, but then I have no problem when conservative Christians do the same.
I'm not sure, though, why those who have a problem with it from the Right, would not have a problem with it from the Left. Perhaps they do.
It is, frankly, silly to suggest that Christians who support tax cuts are in effect supporting less help for the poor. First of all there is the argument that cutting taxes increases government revenues, but no need to debate economics. Make the reaching assumption that for every $1 in taxes not paid to the government, there is exactly $1 less of taxes going to the poor, it does not follow that being in favor of cutting taxes is being in favor of cutting help to the poor. If these people and organizations relied entirely upon the government to help the poor then with our reaching assumption we could argue that support for less taxes was in effect support for less help for the poor. Of course they don't advocate relying solely on the government to help the poor.
If liberal christians are allowed to let their political beliefs shape their religious ministry (and visa versa) --- and they should be --- then surely the same should be allowed for conservative christians. Tax dollars are not the only way to help the poor and it is a political, not religious belief that it is the best way. Having the government mandate a minimum wage is not the only way to help the poor, and it is political, not religious belief that holds that it is.
Being focused on helping the poor is by no means a bad thing, but neither is disagreeing on best to provide the help. Good for churches that tackle social as well as spiritual problems.
This article and those it quotes, however, seem a little bit too focused on a sort of competition with their conservative counterparts for my taste in piety. I don't have much doubt that their conservative counterparts would engage in the same practice if the Religious Left beat them to the Social Values pulpit, but so what? There seems to be a very active theme within the Left, that they've been nice guys too long and now need to dish out double of what they have taken. Aside from the fact that it is ludicrous, it just doesn't seem proper to have it evoked, even marginally, by pastors.
