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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would pay at least $ 15 an hour to US congressional trainees after criticizing her future colleagues for offering unpaid internships and failing to pay a " decent salary "to the staff.
"It's time to walk," tweeted the Democrat Congresswoman in a tweet Tuesday . "Very few members of Congress pay their trainees, we will be one of them."
She tweeted a link to a Washington Post article in which her campaign manager, Saikat Chakrabarti, confirmed that trainees in her office would be paid "at least" $ 15 by the hour.
The Ocio-Cortez pledge comes a day after she criticized her future colleagues in Congress, including the Democrats, for failing to pay trainees.
She also tweeted on Monday that she had seen congressional employees wait for tables next door. (Ocasio-Cortez was a waitress before the beginning of her political career.)
To find out more: Meet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a millennial and socialist political novice, the youngest woman of all time elected to Congress
] "This week, I went to the center of Washington for late-night meals, chatting with the staff, and several bartenders, directors, and servers * were currently working in the Senate + offices * ", she wrote . "It's a shame."
Ocasio-Cortez said that Congress should also increase Wages salaries staff members so that they can afford to live in Washington, DC, one of the most expensive cities in the United States.
"It is unfair for the Congress to provide a living wage, while resorting to unpaid interns and overworked underpaid staff that Republicans want to make a statement on" fiscal responsibility "", she tweeted .
A report released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Pay Our Interns revealed that in the House only 8% of Republicans and 3.6% of Democrats were paying interns. She found that in the Senate, 51% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats were paying their interns.
Ocasio-Cortez's tweet was published on Monday after a journalist declared that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, another Democrat in New York, was recruiting an intern not paid. A few hours later, Schumer's office announced that the post posting had been posted "by mistake" and indicated that Schumer trainees would receive an allowance at the new Congress.
Read more: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says her health care costs double the price of plans proposed in Congress.
From 2019, the Senate and the House will have funds to pay the trainees. The House will receive $ 8.8 million to distribute among the offices of the members of Parliament and the Senate will receive $ 5 million.
Ocasio-Cortez recognized the new fund noting that it will pay $ 20,000 per congressman for his trainees. Each congressman is allowed four trainees at a time.
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