The Poor Lose Ground

Millions of hard-working Americans are losing the battle against inflation. They have scraped by for seven years on the federal minimum wage, $3.35 an hour. At that stagnant rate, full-time workers earn less than $7,000 a year--a salary below the poverty level for a family of three. No matter how hard they work, no matter how high prices rise, the workers cannot count on a yearly pay raise. They get a raise not when they deserve one but only when politics allows it.

It is up to Congress to increase the minimum wage, but politics complicates that task. The Reagan Administration and most Republicans oppose any increase for fear that an increase will cost jobs, raise prices and hurt the very people whom Congress wants to help. Looking back on the historical record, the theory does not wash in practice.

Most Democrats argue for an increase. Legislation sponsored by Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) in the House would raise the minimum wage to $4.55 an hour. The increase, based on raises of 40 cents an hour over the next three years, is a reasonable proposition.

After seven years, any increase will be of some help to workers trying to catch up with inflation, but Congress must not wait another seven years to act again. A compromise that would have indexed the minimum wage at 50% of the average private wage failed to pass. Congress can make up for that lapse only by raising minimum wages annually.

Although no date has been scheduled for floor action on the measures in the House and Senate, most Democrats are anxious to bring the bills to a full vote by Labor Day. If they succeed, they will force President Reagan to think carefully about vetoing a pay raise for nearly 5 million Americans during an election year.

Workers who earn the minimum wage include teen-agers, young adults on their first jobs and spouses who work part time just to help out. But nearly 1 million heads of households support families on the minimum wage. They have lost nearly one-third of their buying power since Congress last raised the rate in January, 1981, although workers have been luckier in six states--including California, where the minimum wage rose to $4.25 on July 1.

Most Americans believe that hard work pays off. It is hard to go on believing when a welfare check is worth more than a pay check, or a pay check stands still while the cost of rent, groceries and just about everything else keeps going up and up.

Congress has raised the minimum wage only 15 times since 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act guaranteed that a working man could support his family with dignity. A pay increase that allows hard-working Americans to keep pace with inflation is long overdue. That is not too much to ask for the men, women and teen-agers who are no strangers to hard work.