A priority for Jubilee justice in the U.S. is increasing the minimum wage, and indexing it -- tying automatic annual changes to the rate of inflation. USCC, Network and other groups grounded in Catholic social teaching support current bills in House (HR 325) and Senate (S 192) to raise the minimum from $5.15 to $6.15 in two steps by September, 2000. The change isn't mainly for teenagers at fast food outlets. Of the 12 million workers who would benefit, 74 percent are adults, and 60 percent are women. They are single heads of households with children: teacher's aides, child care and eldercare workers, nighttime cleaners of office buildings. They are the people moving from welfare to work under the new welfare laws. Yet, working full time all year, they earn $10,700 at the current minimum wage -- $2,200 below the poverty line for a family of three. No one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.

Neither HR 325 nor S 192 provides for indexing, but Catholic advocates are lobbying hard to get the sponsors to add an indexing provision, so that low income workers can plan on regular increases, not subject to political infighting. In its Voting Record of last year's Congressional session, published in February, NETWORK used a yes vote on the minimum wage last September as one of its social justice yardsticks. The Republican-controlled Senate tabled a minimum wage bill on a party line vote.

Working for a fairer minimum wage may bring many CTAers into partnership with organized labor. The 1999-2000 grassroots lobbying plans of the AFL-CIO will be heavily concentrated in six states, which also happen to have large contingents of CTA members: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.