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The chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions announced that he will present legislation to increase the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour, as compensation for juicy corporate profits.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, plans to dust off a longstanding battle of his: raising the minimum wage, as, he says, income inequality and corporate profits grow.
The former contender for Joe Biden in the last Democratic primaries for the Presidency announced that he will present a bill, first in June before his commission, and then before the plenary session of the Senate, to raise the minimum income to $17 an hour.
“Nobody in this country can survive on $7.25 an hour. And maybe some of my colleagues in Congress want to live for a month on $7.25 an hour and see what it feels like,” he explained, during a conference in press outside the Capitol in Washington.
According to Sanders, the federal minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2007. “You can’t do it for nine dollars an hour; you can’t do it for $12 an hour; (…) It is not acceptable today that almost 35 million American workers earn less than 17 dollars an hour, ”he added.
Inflation has made something that cost $15 in 2012, when labor activists adopted the slogan “Fight for $15” in a push for wage increases, likely cost nearly $20 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Opponents of wage increases argue that they could be detrimental to small businesses, which have already taken a huge hit during the coronavirus pandemic, and could discourage formal job creation.
with PA
