NWLC Applauds Reintroduction of the Raise the Wage Act

(Washington, D.C.) Fourteen years since the federal minimum wage was increased in 2009, Congress today reintroduced the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $17 per hour by 2028—and phase out exclusions that have allowed employers to pay even less than the minimum wage to tipped workers, young workers, and people with disabilities.

The following is a statement by Emily Martin, Vice President for Education & Workplace Justice at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC):

“New NWLC research confirms that women—disproportionately Black women, Latinas, and Native women—are nearly two-thirds of the workforce in the lowest-paying jobs in this country. Women working as child care workers, home care workers, restaurant servers, cashiers, house cleaners, and more work hard every day to support all of us—and yet their employers typically pay them less than $15 per hour. As a result, more than one in three women in these essential but underpaid jobs lives below twice the poverty line, even when they work full time.

“Our shamefully low federal minimum wage—stuck at $7.25 an hour for well over a decade, and at $2.13 an hour for tipped workers for more than 30 years—keeps women and their families in poverty and drives racial and gender wage gaps. The Raise the Wage Act would begin to correct this injustice. Congress should pass it without delay.”