Jobs and Economic Justice

Congresswoman Pelosi joins Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Mayor Ed Lee and Bay Area Representatives Jackie Speier, Mike Honda and Jared Huffman at the Department of Labor’s San Francisco Forum on Working Families to highlight Democrats’ plan to build an economy that works for everyone by raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing fair pay for women, and creating good-paying jobs for the middle class.

Since 2010, the economy has added over 15 million private sector jobs. However, it is clear that Congress must do more to create good-paying jobs and increase the paychecks of hard-working Americans. To continue moving our economy forward, we must secure our country’s future with a secure financial future for all so that hardworking families can buy a home, send their children to college and save for retirement.

American workers drive our nation’s success and deserve an economy that works for them. We need middle-class economics, not the failed trickle-down economics that drove our economy into a ditch as House Republicans continue to stack the deck for the wealthy. We must raise the federal minimum wage, extend overtime pay, secure collective bargaining rights and the right to organize in the workplace, protect workers from discrimination and ensure equal pay for equal work.

It is a point of great pride that our State and our City are leading the nation by enacting laws to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. However, the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 for nearly seven years and has not been raised since Democrats were in the majority. Now is the time to boost the wages of the 25 million workers across the country who are still waiting for a long-overdue pay raise.

I strongly support President Obama’s transformative final overtime rule that will give more than four million Americans the higher pay their hard work deserves and reaffirm the 40-hour work week that is the cornerstone of middle-class America. 

Workers’ rights are essential to the health and strength of the American people and serve as the foundation of the middle class. Yet, in the courts, in the states, and in the Congress, we see powerful interests trying to undermine the right to organize. It is long past time for Congress to adopt workplace policies that preserve unions’ ability to maintain a strong voice on behalf of workers.

More than half a century after the enactment of the Equal Pay Act, full-time working women earn just 80 cents, on average, for every dollar a man earns. I am committed to making pay equity the law of the land so that women and men get equal pay for equal work. The existing legal tools available to remedy gender-based pay discrimination are not enough, which is why I am proud to support immediate passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act along with every House Democrat to close the yearly gap of $10,470 in wages between full-time working men and women.

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