Labor Secretary Tom Perez will call for a higher minimum wage at a union-organized forum in Washington on Wednesday, a sign that the Obama administration will make advocating a higher wage a major part of its pushback against the new Republican-led Congress.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has emerged as the leader of the Senate’s liberal wing, will also attend and will provide the keynote address for the event, which is being hosted by the AFL-CIO at Gallaudet University. The labor federation has dubbed the event the “National Summit on Raising Wages.”
Warren has been an advocate of raising the wage and addressing wage inequality in general. She will base her speech on the work of French economist Thomas Piketty, according to a report in Time. His best-selling book on wage inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, became a cause celebre among liberals.
On the same day, President Obama will speak at a Ford plant in Detroit where he will use the auto bailout to make the case for the federal government’s role in the economic recovery. The president will then “lay out specific new actions and preview new policy proposals that will be included in his State of the Union address to make sure that all Americans benefit from the economic recovery,” according to a White House statement. A minimum wage increase is expected to be part of that agenda. Ironically, the plant he will be speaking at is currently closed due to sagging demand for the autos made at the plant.
Democrats have pushed for raising the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, to $10.10, but legislation died in Congress last year and minimum wage activists have largely turned to state- and city-level efforts to raise the wage. In 2014, voters in five states approved ballot initiatives raising their minimums and legislatures in another 10 states also increased their minimum levels.
Organized labor has pushed for an even higher wage, organizing protest events at fast-food chains and Walmart stores over the last two years demanding a $15 minimum. Unions have long supported hikes to the minimum wage, which reduces the incentive for businesses to use cheaper, non-union labor.
But with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, advocates have little hope that the federal level will raised anytime soon. Nevertheless, liberal groups such as the AFL-CIO still see it as a popular, winning issue and therefore an effective one to use against the GOP.
Last year, the White House applied a $10.10 minimum wage to all federal contracting work. The gesture was mostly symbolic: Federal law already required that contractors pay the “prevailing wage” for work in that area, which was typically well above $7.25 an hour.
Perez in particular has been an outspoken advocate for an increase, calling it a “moral an economic imperative” in a 2013 speech a last year. “Can you think of a better way to raise wages at no cost to the federal government?” he asked during a speech in June at the Economic Policy Institute, which is backed by organized labor.
