Working Poor for Washington / Workers Protest Taxpayer-Funded ‘Poverty Jobs’

Close to 100 cleaning and concessions contract workers from various federal facilities in Washington walked off their jobs and marched to the White House to protest what they called taxpayer-funded “poverty jobs”.

Workers from Union Station, the Smithsonian Museums, the Ronald Reagan building, and the Old Post Office were joined by supporters from Good Jobs Nation and other groups who petitioned President Obama to sign an executive order to raise the labor standards for employees of federal contractors.

Currently, employees of contractors are paid a fraction of what they would receive if they were directly employed by the federal government. Often wages are low enough that they qualify for food stamps and Medicaid. Right now, the minimum wage in Washington D.C. is just $8.25 an hour – above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 but still less than the $10.60 starting wage for Washington’s federal pay scale. D.C.’s minimum wage is also nowhere near the $12.50 an hour in wages and benefits that a living-wage bill would have required large retailers in the city to pay their workers had mayor Vincent Gray not vetoed the measure earlier this September.

The workers took the dramatic action of temporarily walking away from their jobs to raise awareness about their impoverishing working conditions. The federal government is the largest low-wage employer in the country; many of its employees are paid such low wages that they are unable to afford basic needs like food, clothing, and even rent.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Workers Protest Taxpayer-Funded ‘Poverty Jobs’.