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Formerly the Mid-South Interfaith Network for Economic Justice     

Faithfully seeking justice with workers                                                         

    Interfaith Celebration to Continue Dr. King's
  Work for Living Wages
  Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support striking sanitation
   workers making poverty wages, faith leaders said that he would be shocked to see millions
   of Americans continuing to be paid poverty wages. Leaders from around the country gathered
  in Memphis on March 13^th to hold an Interfaith Celebration to Continue Dr. King’s Work for Living
   Wages. The event was held at Centenary United Methodist Church, whose pastor in 1968,
   the Rev. James Lawson, organized major religious support for striking sanitation workers
   who faced poverty wages, racial discrimination, and highly dangerous working conditions.
   In large part because of faith and community support, workers won a union contract after
    being on strike for 65 days, a few days after the assassination of Dr. King.

    “We got tired,” sanitation striker Taylor Rogers told those gathered in Memphis for the
   celebration, “and so we stood up and said ‘I am a man.’ Without Dr. King and the ministers
   who helped us, we never would have won that strike.”

  The interfaith worship service was  
  co-sponsored by the Let Justice Roll Living
  Wage Campaign and Workers Interfaith Network.
  The event kicked off a local fast for Memphis
   workers who do not earn a living wage, which
   was used to press the Memphis City Council
   to expand its living wage ordinance to include
   more workers. Speakers also pressed national
  leaders to make the minimum wage a living wage,
   so that all workers can earn enough to meet their
   families’ basic needs.

  Rev. Jennifer Kottler of Let Justice Roll pointed out
  that minimum wage workers have actually
  lost significant ground since Dr. King traveled to
   Memphis to support the sanitation workers.
   In 1968, sanitation workers were making just above
  the federal minimum wage, which  is $9.70 when adjusted
  for inflation. Today’s minimum wage is just $5.85, even
  with the increase Congress passed in the summer of
  last year. “Workers should not have to choose between
  paying the rent and buying food for their children,” said Kottler.
  “A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it."

  Memphians at the service celebrated the City Council’s passage of a living wage ordinance in 2006 which
  requires most workers performing work for the City to be paid between $10 - $12 an hour. But in
  undertaking a 24 hour period of fasting, prayer, and action, they also vowed to press the Council to include
  workers at the City’s public utility in the ordinance. “May our bodies be instruments that help us understand
  the daily struggles of our sisters and brothers who do not earn a living wage,” participants in the  service prayed.
  “May our witness make visible the injustice workers in our city, our state, and our nation face.”

     More information on the living wage campaigns of the Mid-South Interfaith Network

     Support the Living Wage Campaign: Become a Mid-South Interfaith Network member