By JM Rieger and Bridget Bowman

A complaint filed by two Capitol Visitor Center employees alleging unfair labor practices by their employer is catching the attention of Senate Democrats, who in a letter on Monday pushed for administrators to give preference to contractors who pay a “living wage,” provide benefits and allow for collective bargaining. On Tuesday, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Charles E. Schumer said he would support raising the wage to $15 an hour for Restaurant Associate workers but would not address whether privatization of congressional food services was a mistake. “I’m not going to go into what happened — it happened before I was rules chair — but we do support a living wage for all of the restaurant workers,” Schumer said. “We’ve made that clear to the chairman of the Rules Committee and we hope we can work something out to get that done.”