KEJA - Rev. Kemper, Raise the Wage

Kentucky Can Do Better!

Raise the Wage! United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, Executive Director
Kentucky Council of Churches

Testimony to the House Labor & Industry Committee, 2/15/07

Chairman Gray, honorable members of this committee, it is my pleasure and honor to speak to you today about raising the minimum wage in Kentucky. Let me first applaud your efforts, Chairman Gray, to spear-head this campaign for the past two years, for standing with the working people of Kentucky and championing the cause of the working poor.

But let me also say how very disappointed we are this morning to discover how drastically the bill has been changed. And I thought that the Speaker was with us at the press conference we had before the session opened!

For those of you who are new to the General Assembly, I am the Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, an organization that is an association of 11 Christian denominations who have some 22 administrative units—dioceses, presbyteries, conferences, etc—and who together have nearly 3000 congregations with close to one million members in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I am also a member of the Raise the Wage Kentucky coalition a group with some 24 participating organizations, and on whose behalf I speak today.

In October 2005, the Kentucky Council of Churches at its annual assembly of delegates from the member communions, unanimously agreed to work together to pass the minimum wage in Kentucky, whether or not it was passed by the Federal government. Further, we joined a national movement called “Let Justice Roll” made up of over 90 non-profit, labor, and religious organizations. [The increase of the minimum wage at both the state and federal levels is one of three primary social justice goals of religious groups across the nation: the other two being a peaceful resolution to the Iraq war; and the care of creation in a time of alarming global warming.]

The breadth of membership in our Kentucky coalition, and in the national movement Let Justice Roll, is indicative of the national level of support for this issue. I remind you of the vote of the people in November: along with concern about the war in Iraq, the minimum wage was a second major issue motivating voters. Well over 3⁄4 of the American voting public supports increasing the minimum wage….which actually will not even make the minimum wage comparable to what it was in the 1950s. The minimum wage in 1956 was worth $7.41 in today’s dollars. That the wage hasn’t been increased in over a decade is unconscionable. We can no longer wait for Washington to act. We have been waiting for three years, and they still haven’t passed the legislation. It is incumbent upon us here in Kentucky to join the other 29 states and the District of Columbia and set our own moral floor beneath which no worker should be paid. I remind you that the people support this issue.

The Kentucky Council of Churches’ policy statement asked that you, the legislature of the Commonwealth, raise the minimum wage to an amount necessary to provide for basic needs of a worker, and to index this wage to rise as inflation rises. [We believe that such indexing will help businesses plan, and avoid future jumps as that proposed in this legislation. It will give them a guide to plan for their business expenditures.]

People who criticize the idea of increasing the minimum wage predictably forecast dire consequences with every raise. You should know that they are, predictably, WRONG. Since the last minimum wage increase in 1997, the value of the wage has fallen by 20 percent, adjusted for inflation, while domestic corporate profits across the US are up by 74%, retail profits are up by 55%, and business has reaped $312 billion in tax breaks. After the last minimum wage increases (when all the same critiques were offered about job loss and rising prices), the nation experienced dramatically stronger job growth, and lower inflation and lower poverty rates. Since then, states that have raised their minimum wages above $5.15 have had better employment and small business trends than states that have not.

In research reported by Goldman-Sachs, a paper available on our coalition web-site, RaisetheWageKy.org, the Wall Street firm says that a 40% increase in the minimum wage will make a palpable difference to workers, but there is little evidence that it will have any significant impact on the over all economy or on jobs. In the 29 states that have already raised their minimum wages, if what the opponents say about potential for job loss and negative impact on small businesses, the empirical evidence does not bear out their claims. Over and over again, academic, peer-reviewed research by economists does not bear out the claims of those who oppose the Kentucky proposal, or the Washington proposal.

But this isn’t just about economics: this is a values issues. If we value children, if we value families, if we value work, if we value young people getting a college education, then we need to put legislation behind what we say we believe.

You have hung in your chambers the national motto: “In God We Trust.” That’s wonderful. But I remind you that the God in whom you, and I, claim to be our final trust is a God who is not to be mocked. “I hate the noise of your solemn assemblies”, Isaiah tells us. Amos, from whom comes the phrase “let justice roll down like waters,” warns that “because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” Somewhere, writer Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and other wonderful books, says that those who invoke God’s name don’t know the risk they are taking, and that they ought to be wearing crash helmets to prevent the roof from caving in on top of them. Scripture is quite clear: Over 2000 references in the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Old Testament concern the treatment of the poor, and it is tied to the greater sin of idolatry. You can’t give lip service to God and ignore the needs of the poor. The New Testament contains even more references: one of every 16 verses concerns the poor in the whole New Testament; one of every 10 verses in the first three gospels, and in Luke, one of every 7 verses.

I think you might have been safer if you had hung a banner with Kentucky’s motto—from Aesop and later quoted by Lincoln—“united we stand, divided we fall.” If we unite to help our working poor, then our Commonwealth will prosper. If we continue to keep the working poor in their poverty, Kentucky will never get out of its last place rankings among the states in so many categories.

Let me finally say a word about the tip wage: Many of those who work in situations where they are paid the tip wage may just barely be making the minimum wage. Our tip wage at the Federal minimum of $2.13 here in Kentucky is among the lower of such wages across the US. Thirty states have higher tip wages, and many of those states have higher minimum wages as well. Those who work in these jobs are often women supporting families or college students, or working a second job to try to make ends meet for their families. We keep raising tuition for our college students, a back-handed tax increase if I ever saw one, and we do little or nothing to help them find ways to make ends meet.

In our major cities and our university and college towns, thousands of tip workers are trying to continue their educations. I served on the Cradle to College Commission set up by Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Treasurer Jonathan Miller. Time after time, we heard college students speak of working 40-60 hours a week in restaurants to try to put themselves through college. No wonder so many start but don’t finish. They can’t make ends meet, and they are exhausted from both their work and their studies. My older daughter attended the University of Cincinnati at a a time when tuitions were much lower, and she was considered an in-state student, having graduated from an Ohio high school. But she was working 40 hours a week in a Pizza parlor and delivering pizzas, scaring me half to death, in order to make ends meet. As a single parent, I was helping her as much as I could. In her junior year, she was worn out, and had to drop out a semester just to try to rest as well as to earn more money to go on to finish her degree. I know what these kids go through. If we value college education for our young people, they are the ones who will benefit most from changing the tip wage, or even better, eliminating it as have 7 other states.

Good people, there is a floor below which it is unjust and immoral to pay anyone for their labor. I don’t care whether they are first time workers, young people, or people with minimal skills. This is a values issue about how we are going to treat our neighbors and I surely hope to God that you will vote the values you say you have.

Thank you for listening. Now I hope you will listen carefully to these first person accounts of individuals who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage here in Kentucky.

This site was last updated on February 27, 2007