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STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE ON ITS SUPPORT

OF THE FAIR MINIMUM WAGE ACT OF 2001

New York, NY, Feb. 6,2001—The National Urban League supports Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Congressman David Bonior’s (D-MI) new Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2001 that calls for raising the minimum wage by $1.50 in three increments by January 1, 2003.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2001 would provide long overdue relief for millions of low-wage workers and takes one important step towards closing the poverty gap that threatens American ideals of fairness and equality.

It is unacceptable that workers can earn so little that they remain stuck below the poverty line. Nationwide, roughly 6.3 percent of workers live below poverty. The ratio for black workers is nearly twice that at 11.7 percent. Minimum wage workers have waited far too long for just compensation for their labor.

On January 18, 2001, National Urban League President Hugh Price released the Urban League’s Opportunity Agenda for the Bush Administration (available at www.nul.org/econsummit.html). The agenda outlines steps the Administration must take to level the playing field of opportunity and eliminate every gap (achievement, employment, poverty, digital divide, homeownership and entrepreneurship) that separates African Americans from mainstream America, and includes a call for increasing the minimum wage.

The Urban League is the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. The National Urban League, headquartered in New York City, spearheads the nonprofit, nonpartisan movement, while Urban League affiliates operate in more than 100 cities in 34 states and the District of Columbia.