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People’s Hearing Brings Workers, Candidates Together to Declare $15 Minimum Wage Central to 2020 Election

Jeremy Sprinkle
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For Immediate Release

“$15 for NC: A People’s Hearing” Brings North Carolina Workers, Small Business Owners, Clergy Together with Candidates to Declare Minimum Wage a Central Issue in 2020 Election

Candidates Respond to Workers Testimony about Daily Struggles of Surviving on $7.25 Minimum Wage 

FEB. 13, 2020 (RALEIGH, NC)Raising Wages NC--a growing coalition of labor groups, advocates, business, and faith leaders seeking to raise the state minimum wage to $15/hr--held a public hearing at First Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh tonight to bring together dozens of workers and allies from across the state to testify directly to candidates for Governor and the North Carolina General Assembly about what life is like for a working person in North Carolina and the importance of adopting a $15/hr minimum wage statewide for all workers. 

Testifiers at the hearing asserted that a good job with fair wages is the right of all working people--including domestic workers, farmworkers, disabled workers, and tipped workers who have historically been denied the full protection of state and federal minimum wage laws. Elected officials and candidates listened and briefly responded to testimonies. Participants pushed candidates to publicly state their position on raising the state minimum wage.

“Minimum wage was intended to be a living wage,” said Sara Fearrington, a Durham Waffle House worker and member of the Fight for $15 and a Union. “But today, in North Carolina in 2020, $7.25 is nowhere near a living wage. $15 per hour is the actual minimum wage that workers like me need to cover the bare necessities.” 

The public hearing comes at a pivotal time as one-stop early voting begins in statewide primary elections on March 3rd. Raising wages will be a central issue in the 2020 elections. North Carolina’s minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25/hr for over a decade while costs of living continue to climb--the longest period of stagnation since the creation of a federal minimum in the 1930s. In January 2020, 21 US states raised the minimum wage, but North Carolina was not one of them. Southern workers--white, black, and brown alike--are being left behind. This hearing shed light on the experiences of low-wage workers and what an increased minimum wage would mean for real people working in North Carolina.

“The conditions we live and work under are set by those in power, and working people have the power to rewrite the rules by raising the minimum wage and protecting our freedom to join together,” said state AFL-CIO president MaryBe McMillan. “This is a fight for a better future in the state we are proud to call our home.”

Contact: Megan Williamson, 209-614-3791 / [email protected]; Julia Hawes, 919-863-2406 / [email protected]; Jeremy Sprinkle, 336-255-2711 / [email protected]

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Raising Wages NC is a diverse group of working people and unions, community organizations, faith leaders, businesses, and policy advocates joined in the common belief that all workers in NC deserve a living wage.