Minimum Wage Bus Rolls into Charleston

An organization working to lobby law makers to raise the minimum wage made a stop in Charleston today. The group called, Americans United for Change, is behind a tour across the country the in the “Give America a Raise” bus.

While in the state, they are joined by West Virginia Citizen Action Group, local faith and labor leaders, a small business owner, and low-wage workers.

Campaign leaders applaud West Virginia and Governor Earl Ray Tomblin for signing a bill into law Tuesday that raises the minimum wage to $8 on Jan. 1, 2015, and again to $8.75 in 2016. ~But the campaign is advocating for more. They’re calling on federal lawmakers to stand in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10.

The organization sites a MIT study which says that a living wage in Charleston today is 17-thousand dollars annually to be able to afford housing, medical care, transportation and food. If full-time West Virginia workers made $10.10 an hour, they’d earn more than 21-thousand a year.

The federal minimum wage has stayed the same since 2009. The current minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, means a full time employee makes $15,000 a year.