Several hundred protesters in blue T-shirts saying “Strike” were joined by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a grassy park outside the US Capitol building on Wednesday morning to demand an increase in the minimum wage and to focus attention on the economic struggles of hundreds of federal contract workers.

At the rally, sponsored by the labor union Change to Win, organizers divided their focus between support for legislation that would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour – more than double its current level of $7.25 – and efforts to raise awareness of a one-day strike by workers at the US Senate and other federal agencies to gain a $15-an-hour minimum wage for themselves.

Sanders, a Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate, told the activists he was introducing legislation to raise the federal minimum wage nationwide to $15 an hour.

He told attendees: “In the richest country on the face of the earth, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty,” and he added that the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour was “a starvation wage”.

Sontia Bailey, a cashier in a small canteen inside the Capitol building, took the stage to describe how she was unable to survive on her wage of $10.59 an hour and was forced to work a second full-time job at KFC just to make ends meet. Bailey said the toll of working 70 hours a week had contributed to a miscarriage she had suffered three weeks earlier. In her opinion, with a $15 minimum wage, she would only have to work one job and would not have suffered a miscarriage.



The cashier, along with other striking workers, is employed by a federal contractor called Compass. They were calling for a federal executive order to grant them a $15 minimum wage and make it easier for them to collectively bargain. But, for most workers, legislation would be needed to raise their wages.

Sanders, who also faced criticism from Black Lives Matters protesters at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix this weekend for not sufficiently talking about African Americans in his stump speech, was careful to discuss minority groups before an audience that was almost exclusively black and Latino. “Today, more than half of all African American workers and nearly 60% of Latino workers make less than $15 an hour,” Sanders thundered. “That is unacceptable.”



While Sanders and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley support legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the bill is unlikely to advance in a Republican-controlled Congress. The proposal has already drawn skepticism from some on left as perhaps too drastic, considering that the median wage in eight states is currently less than $15 an hour.

Sanders’ bill, co-sponsored by Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, has also been introduced in the House by members of Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Representative Keith Ellison.