"Time for the Dough to Rise" Says Labor Seder

(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. 
- report/photo by Chris Garlock