Jan Schakowsky Quotes

American workers deserve a raise. I fully support the push for $15 an hour and a union. We also must raise wages for low and middle income families.

The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

When I travel around the country and talk about the need to raise the minimum wage or expand access to paid leave, I often talk about the need for us to reject false choices.

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.

We never accept low wages as the driving force for employment or growth.

We must organize. We must protest. We must cry out in a loud voice that America needs a raise. We must keep working until workers in this country don't have to struggle to make ends meet.

I believe in $15 as a minimum wage.

If you look at the future of the Democratic Party, things like raising the minimum wage - Democrats need to get behind raising the minimum wage and be clear on where we stand on trade deals.

America's workers deserve a clean vote on a $7.25 increase, with no strings attached. Such an increase helps everyone and hurts no one.

The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.

During Seattle's successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, 'If $15 is so good, why not $50?' It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so.

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.

America's leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.

When we talk about the minimum wage, we have to ask ourselves what it is that we owe both our workers and employers. I think clearly we owe them fairness.

So I will stand more steadfastly for the things I stand up for, like people who work for a living. I'd like to be able to stand that way when I go to Congress.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

If a man or a woman puts in an honest day's work, they should to be able to earn a living wage.

An industry that can not pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.

People believe that if they work, they should be paid a living wage…. Work has to pay.

Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie. Labor is fighting for a larger pie.

Ten cents a day is adequate pay for a workingman.

My question becomes, 'If we want to empower people with higher pay, there are probably better ways to do it that are more enduring than simply a federal mandate on wage level.'