Rally, Report Urge Higher Wages for Service Workers in Federal Facilities

Even with a freeze on basic pay rates and unpaid leave days and repeated attacks on the federal workforce, being a federal employee means you have a good, though as of late, a less-lucrative job.

That can’t be said by everyone in the federal workplace.

He is one of “nearly two million private sector employees working on behalf of America [who] earn wages too low to support a family, making $12 or less per hour,” according to “Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality,” a report released Wednesday at a rally launching Good Jobs Nation, an organization of low-wage workers seeking a living wage.

“These are employees working on behalf of America, doing jobs that we have decided are worthy of public funding — yet they’re being treated in a very un-American way,” says the report, written by Amy Traub and Robert Hiltonsmith and published by Demos, a public policy organization that works for racial equity, an expanded middle class and reducing the role of money in politics.

“Today, we have an opportunity to do right by workers who are working on behalf of America,” the report continued, “by ensuring our tax dollars are providing decent and fair wages.”