Two days after launching a national campaign to improve wages, benefits and working conditions for hotel workers in America, former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards and John Wilhelm, president of the UNITE HERE hotel workers union, penned an article that ran in The Boston Globe.

"One of the great disgraces of our country is that a vast new impoverished population has developed in our midst," they wrote. "These are the Americans who work --- in fact, they labor at the heart of the industries that drive our economy --- yet they still are unable to make ends meet, even as they work at two or three jobs."

Edwards and Wilhelm pointed out that 30 million American workers, one out of every four, makes less than $8.70 an hour, including hotel housekeepers. While the U.S. hotel industry, which employs more than 1.3 million people, has largely bounded back from a post-9/11 slump in guests and revenue, the average wage for housekeepers is $8.67 an hour or $17,340 a year, which falls below the poverty line for a family of four.

"Hotel workers all across this country believe in the American ethic based on the principle that hard work can lead to a better future," the politician and the union leader pointed out. "They do no lack motivation, dedication or skill. What they lack is power."

The Hotel Workers Rising! campaign hopes to change that.

"It is time for America to become the land of opportunity again," Edwards and Wilhelm declared, "so no American who works full time lives in poverty.

---RWD