"Time for the Dough to Rise" Says Labor Seder
Monday, March 24, 2014(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
A 40-year-old fast
food worker in Randallstown, MD making $8 an hour spends his spare time looking
for a second job to make ends meet...A pizza delivery driver making $7.25 an
hour has to rotate paying her bills; when her car broke down she couldn't
afford to fix it and lost her job...a latchkey kid never saw his parents
because they worked multiple jobs and staggered shifts for minimum wages. These
and other tales of the minimum wage life were the subject of last night's 13th
annual Labor Seder, organized by Jews United for Justice. Several hundred
attendees celebrated the festive, ritual-rich meal that remembers and reenacts
the ancient Jewish story of liberation from slavery in Egypt, using the
occasion to "recognize that there are people in our midst who struggle
every day for dignity in their work and freedom in their lievs as a
whole." While last year's local minimum-wage victories were celebrated,
"The minimum wage should be a floor (and) we should keep reaching
higher," Avodah director Marilyn Sneiderman said, and seder participants
wrote hand-written notes to their representatives pushing for legislation like
Maryland's minimum wage increase to $10.10 an hour.
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report/photo by Chris Garlock