Local 500 member Gerard Bradley interviewed about the living wage
On September 15, outside of the offices of the District’s Department of Employment Services (DOES), fifty union members, organizers, and activists marched and chanted –demanding that DC government enforce the Living Wage law passed more than five years ago.
They called on Mayor Vincent Gray to take immediate action to fix this problem now. Mayor Gray said he supports the Living Wage, but since he took office the law is still not being enforced.
Local 500 member Gerard Bradley joined a delegation that went into the DOES offices and demanded that the Department Director, Lisa Mallory, come down and meet with the union members and activists outside and explain why she was not enforcing a law that had been on the books since 2006.
When DOES staff began to make up excuses for why she could not meet with them – she was in a meeting, she wasn’t in this morning – he and the rest delegation joined the others outside. Gerard took the bullhorn.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he told the crowd, “that we can make a law that was passed six years ago and isn’t being enforced.”
A cameraman for local news stations was on hand to cover the protest and interviewed Gerard about how people were being affected by the District’s failure to enforce its own Living Wage law.
