NAACP Strongly Supports an Increase in the Federal Minimum Wage

WHEREAS, the federal minimum wage has lost more than 30% of its value and would be more than $10.55 per hour today if it had kept pace with the cost of living over the past forty years; and

WHEREAS, the current wage of $7.25 was implemented in July 2009, the final of three increases resulting from 2007 legislation signed by President George W. Bush; and

WHEREAS, the minimum wage today pays only $15,000 per year, which is $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of 3; and

WHEREAS, the minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at a meager $2.13 per hour for more than twenty years; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP has supported an increase in the federal minimum wage in resolutions in 1976, 1977, 1979, 1987, 1996, 2006, 2007; and

WHEREAS, in March 2013, Senator Tom Harkin (lA) and Congressman George Miller (CA), introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 (S. 460 I H.R. 1010); and

WHEREAS, this vital legislation would increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2015, in three steps of 95 cents each; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act would also raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to 70% of the minimum wage; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act would then adjust the minimum wage each year to keep pace with the rising cost of living starting in 2016 - a key policy reform known as "indexing," which ten states are already using, to prevent the minimum wage from falling in value each year and to ensure that it is not held hostage to political whims; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would help restore the minimum wage to its historic level, making up for decades of erosion; and

WHEREAS, more than 30 million workers would receive a raise from the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013; the majority of this money would be directly reinvested into our national economy; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would generate more than $32 billion in new economic activity, translating to 140,000 new full-time jobs as higher sales lead businesses to hire more employees; and

WHEREAS, of the workers who would benefit from the Fair Minimum Wage Act, 88% are adults over the age of twenty, 56% are women, nearly half are workers of color, and over 43% have some college education; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act will boost the minimum wage to $21,000, lifting families above the poverty line; and

WHEREAS, the Fair Minimum Wage Act brings the minimum wage to an acceptable base, and then indexes it to inflation so that it does not take an act of Congress to make certain that it keeps pace with the economic circumstances of our time.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVE, that the NAACP strongly supports and endorses the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP Washington Bureau promote enactment of the Fair Minimum Wage Act through Action Alerts and other means; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP specifically endorses and supports an increase in the federal Minimum Wage for all workers, and that the NAACP supports an increase in the tipped Minimum Wage and that the NAACP strongly supports indexing the minimum wage to inflation.