Support Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act

In the free enterprise economy in which we live I believe most Americans could easily agree that our level of earned income should be commensurate with our skills, production and willingness to risk.  So what normally follows when the system works as it should is a significant difference in levels of income. 

I believe most would agree that the board of directors and the president of a company, for example, should make more than the line foremen (or women) and the line foremen should make more than the skilled production workers.  And it seems obvious that the unskilled worker’s wages would be at the lowest level.  However, the lowest level should not mean a starvation level!! 

Regardless of their unskilled status these workers afford the workers above them a living and the company a product, or they wouldn’t be there.  By the same token they should be entitled to a living wage, not the starvation federal minimum wage of today.  This certainly is not to say that all companies operate at this obscene level, but far too many do. 

Our illustrious republican administration is the great champion and facilitator of the $5.15 minimum wage, which now has remained the same for eight straight year.  At least under the Davis-Bacon Act contractors hired for federal public projects were required to pay the prevailing regional wage.  In New Orleans that wage is just over $9 per hour, but President Bush has suspended the Act in hurricane ravaged areas, and contracts may pay as little as $5.15 per hour. 

Thankfully a Democrat again is striving to come to the rescue.  Representative George Miller, California, has introduced the “Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act”; a bill that would repeal Bush’s suspension of Davis-Bacon.  Miller’s bill has garnered the bi-partisan support of 199 co-sponsors. 

To contact your legislators online regarding this issue go to www.go.sojo.net/campaign/fair_wages or urge them to co-sponsor “Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act: by calling the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. 

Buz Cormany
Medina, OH

Note:  Factual details for this letter were provided by The Peach with Justice Project, East Ohio Conference, United Methodist Church.