Labor secretary: Raising minimum wage a religious imperative
By Sean Higgins | January 7, 2015 | 11:42 am
Labor Secretary Tom Perez said Wednesday that it was a religious imperative that the federal...
Labor Secretary Tom Perez said Wednesday that it was a religious imperative that the federal government help American workers through issues such as raising the minimum wage and requiring businesses to pay more overtime.
"This is really about biblical teachings. This is about what is taught in the Quran and what is in the Torah and what we learn about making sure we 'do unto others.' ... This about who we are as a nation," Perez said in an emotional speech at a forum on the minimum wage hosted by the AFL-CIO labor federation at Gallaudet University.
He said the Obama administration's economic agenda would include a "relentless" drive to increase the minimum wage as well as stopping "wage theft" through increasing business requirements for providing overtime and paid leave. He applauded labor unions, saying that "we need to raise the workers' voice." He repeatedly said that those policies were right because they were moral and ethical.
"Low wages are a choice, not a necessity. Low benefits are a choice, not a necessity," Perez said. To justify the federal government’s role in changing that, he invoked Martin Luther King, Jr.'s quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice," then added his own bit: "But it doesn't bend on its own."
This was not the first time the labor secretary has invoked his religious beliefs to justify the administration’s agenda. In a 2013 speech, also before an AFL-CIO convention, he said his own spirituality had led him to believe that "It was not possibly God’s will that people working a 40-hour week should live in poverty."
In Wednesday's speech, Perez said an economic recovery was under way, repeatedly noting that the country had experienced 57 consecutive months of job growth. "A little over a year ago, our unemployment rate was above 7 percent. Now it is 5.8 percent. Very few people would have predicted that progress," he said.
Nevertheless, he said the administration still had much to do. He highlighted that the administration is set to release new regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act that would limit the ability of business owners to designate workers as managerial and therefore exempt from the requirement that they be paid overtime.
There is little expectation that Congress, now under Republican control, will agree to raising the minimum wage. Perez’s said the president will push for it anyway.
Democrats believe the issue, which passed ballot initiatives in states last year, is a wedge against the Republicans' economic agenda. Perez noted that the states that passed it included conservative ones such as Alaska and Nebraska.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/labor-secretary-raising-minimum-wage-a-religious-imperative/article/2558297
