Sara Niccoli is a program representative at the New York State Nurses Association, with experience in nonprofit management and policy advocacy dedicated to improving quality of life for working people. She is a former executive director of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition.

Sheila D. Collins is a political science professor and director of the Master’s Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. She is a co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition and author of Let Them Eat Ketchup: The Politics of Poverty and Inequality. Read a 2005 interview with Collins, in which she […]

Robert Pollin is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the university’s Political Economy Research Institute. He is co-author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy. Read a June 2003 paper he wrote evaluating the impact of living-wage policies in a number of U.S. cities.

Richard B. Freeman is the Herbert S. Ascherman professor of economics at Harvard University in Cambridge. He also directs the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Freeman has written that research shows that increasing the minimum wages has little or no effect on the number of jobs available.

Kenneth A. Couch is an associate professor of economics at the University of Connecticut. He has done research showing that increasing the minimum wage reduces the employment of some of the most vulnerable categories of workers, including teenagers and adults who lack a high school degree.

Rabbi Michael Namath is program director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. The Religious Action Center is the Washington, D.C., office of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, a joint office of the Union for Reform Judaism (representing 900 congregations with 1.5 million Reform Jews) and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, whose […]

Stephen Copley is chair of the board of the Let Justice Roll Campaign, a coalition of 90 faith, community, labor and business organizations working to raise the minimum wage. It sponsors annual “living wage” days, which this year fell on Jan. 10-11, 2009.

The Methodist Federation for Social Action, with offices in Washington, D.C., is an independent group of Methodists concerned with peace and justice issues, including economic justice. Chett Pritchett is the executive director.

Interfaith Worker Justice, based in Chicago, tries to organize people of faith in the United States to push for better working conditions, benefits and wages for low-income people. Its Web site states that “among the key principles shared by all faiths are the importance of paying workers fairly for their labor and the right of […]