Norton Congratulates Low-Wage Museum Federal Contract Workers on Successful Campaign for Union Representation

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today made the following statement on the implications of union representation won this week by federal contract workers at several Smithsonian museums.

"Congratulations to the Smithsonian Museum contract service workers who have won the right to union representation after taking the risk of strikes and demonstrations for several months. Many of us in the Congress, particularly members of the Congressional Progressive Congress, rallied to their support because of their courage and their example for the two million federal contract workers nationwide who are not paid a living wage. Their campaign vindicates the president's call for a significant increase in the minimum wage, and I hope that he will reciprocate with an executive order to raise poverty wages in his own federal contractor workforce. He can eliminate the shame of taxpayers subsidizing federal contractors who pay wages so low that their employees must often receive government assistance such as food stamps, health care and other federal programs, costs ordinarily borne by private employers. The low-wage Smithsonian contract workers have become the leading edge of the first movement to give form and substance to the rhetoric about the 99 percent. The federal government cannot distance itself from its own low-wage contract workers. It can close its eyes to the moral crisis and poverty, but it cannot outsource the consequences to taxpayers and to the deficit. Congratulations to the federal contract workers for breaking through for low-wage workers throughout our country."

Published: December 19, 2013