MassLive: Massachusetts clergy urge legislators to raise minimum wage and index it to inflation

View original: MassLive

 Massachusetts faith leaders are urging legislative negotiators to raise the $8 an hour minimum wage and index it to inflation.

Clergy members visited the State House Thursday to meet with legislative staff, carrying a message to Senate President Therese Murray to remain firm in support of indexing the wage and telling House Speaker Robert DeLeo to adopt the measure that would enable the wage floor to rise with inflation.

Rev. Jane Soyster Gould, the pastor at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Lynn, said $11 an hour wouldn’t be a living wage, but would make a significant difference to around 500,000 of the state’s lowest-earning workers.

“Poor people, when they get paid more, they spend it. They don’t save it, they don’t have that luxury. I serve a poor and immigrant congregation on the Lynn Common. Folks in my community aren’t making it,” Gould said.