https://youtube.com/watch?v=8On7JmKQZuI
U.S. labor secretary Thomas Perez said Wednesday that White House efforts to raise the minimum wage and overtime pay represent a struggle for universal religious values.
At a speech before AFL-CIO’s “Raising Wages” summit, an emotional Perez painted the struggle for federally-mandated pay increases in spiritual terms. “This is really about biblical teachings,” he said. “This is about what is taught in the Quran and what is in the Torah and what we learn about making sure we ‘do unto others.’”
“Take the Bible and rip up every page that has a reference to the need to help the poor and the underserved, and the Bible turns into, like, a Newsweek magazine,” he continued. ”And that’s what this is about. This is about who we are as a nation.”
It’s not the first time Perez used religious language to bolster the administration’s argument for increased government activity in the labor market. “As I grew older, I grew to conclude that it was not God’s will that people who work a 40-hour week should live in poverity,” he told an AFL-CIO audience in September 2013.
With the Senate in Republican control and a strengthened GOP majority in the House, it is unlikely that the president’s continued push for a higher minimum wage will gain much traction on Capitol Hill.