FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Congress Needs to Pass Employee Free Choice Act to Ensure Future Gains for Workers, Communities

LITTLE ROCK, AR - Starting today, the Federal minimum wage increases to $7.25 per hour, the final part of the 2007 minimum wage legislation passed by Congress. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this long-deserved wage increase will benefit approximately 221,000 Arkansas workers and pump $32.6 million into the state's economy.

"This minimum wage increase is an important step in strengthening our economy by putting more money in the pockets of the hardworking Arkansans who make the Federal minimum wage," said Annette Bennett, a cook in a convenience store. "But when we could end up giving more than $24 trillion in bailout funds to the banks that put us in this economic mess, we must do more to help working families. Even with this increase, the new minimum wage still means a family of four lives in poverty."

To further aid Arkansas workers, Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to bargain with their employers for better job security, wages and benefits to ensure that millions more Americans have good jobs with real benefits and a pathway to the middle class.

Arkansans have been joining together in Change That Works campaign to urge Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Pryor and other Members of Congress to work for the principles of the Employee Free Choice Act--allow workers, not employers, to choose how and when to form a union; enforce real penalties for employers who break the law; and ensure that those who have chosen a union can actually secure a contract.

To date, volunteers knocking on doors, holding meetings, and phone banking have generated more than 6,000 hand-written letters and 3,000 phone calls to Arkansas's elected officials urging their support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

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