Chants of “$10.10 is not enough” filled the air Thursday morning as a group of federal contract workers on strike gathered on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
The group of more than 100, along with members of Congress, gathered to tell President Obama to “finish the job” on minimum wage and to send a message to the Republican-led Congress. But the union-backed group’s message was much more muddled than their simple signs indicated.
“This building symbolizes the American Dream for so many, but not for me and my daughter,” Reginald Lewis, a food service contract worker in the U.S. Capitol, said. “For me, the Capitol represents inequality. I’m struggling to survive on $12 an hour while my corporation makes billions in profit. I have to use food stamps to eat. I’m trying to help my daughter pay for her college tuition, but it’s tough. I’m 50 years old, but I can’t see how I’m ever going to retire. We need the President to help us because this Congress will not.”
The striking workers included workers from the Pentagon, Smithsonian Museums, the National Zoo, Union Station, the Ronald Reagan Federal Building, and cafeteria workers and janitorial staff from the U.S Capitol.
Lewis and his fellow strikers, which organized thanks to Good Jobs Nation, believe that federal contracts should only be given out to companies that pay above minimum wage and “respect worker’s rights.”
The problem? Lewis’s company, by his own admission, already does that. His $12 an hour rate is well above the federal minimum wage and even above the $10.10 wage for federal contractors that Obama ordered through an executive action.
Good Jobs Nation was a part of the push to a $10.10 minimum wage earlier this year, but now they say that — or even $2 above it — is not enough.
They say Obama should take executive action to mandate that the federal government will not award contracts to companies that pay less than $15 an hour, don’t offer benefits, and don’t allow contract workers to unionize.
Multiple speakers at the event said that these people work full-time and they should be paid more just to do it. They also argued that the government owes federal workers more than the private sector.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D- Minn.) tried to make that point at the rally, but seemed to get confused about the group’s message.
“Do you want a minimum marriage? Do you want a minimum coat in the wintertime? Would you like to have minimum transportation? A minimum car means you might get there, you might not. Better than nothing, but not good enough,” Ellison said, firing up the crowd.
Then he switched his argument away from minimum wage to call for the end of privatization of these services.
“But what we really need to do is to stop all this privatization. We need to stop all this outsourcing,” he said. “We need to make this the core function of government and not try to make the government just some sort of business opportunity.”
A contradictory message on an economically unstable proposal, not a cohesive call to action, was the prevailing theme of the strike.
