$15 wage would lift 3.5M Texans
Republicans slam Democratic plan as killer of up to 1M jobs
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of the Texas workforce — 3.5 million employees — would get a raise if Democrats succeed in their bid to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, though Republicans say the effort would also lead to as many as a million jobs lost in the state as businesses try to weather the coronavirus pandemic.
Roughly half of those working in some parts of Houston and San Antonio — the vast majority of whom are workers of color and women — would be affected by the plan, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor group that used federal data to analyze the impact of the proposal.
Democrats say those numbers are evidence of how badly the wage increase is needed, with nearly 200,000 Texans making the $7.25 an hour minimum now, according to federal data.
The effort — which calls for incremental increases to reach $15 an hour by 2025 — is a long shot, as the idea is universally opposed by Republicans, who hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate, enough to block most Democratic priorities.
But Democrats say they're serious about getting it done while they have control of Congress, angling to get it through the Senate with a simple majority vote by tying the legislation to the federal budget.
Texas would be among the states most affected by the legislation. Just less than 3 percent of
Texas workers are paid at or below minimum wage, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data — among the highest percentages in the nation, according to the data. Texas is also one of 21 states that has not raised the minimum wage above the federal minimum, even as some other red states, including Florida and Arkansas, have done so.
“It’s been over a decade since Congress raised the minimum wage, and we must act with a sense of urgency to deliver for working families,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat. Castro said 40 percent of workers in his district would see their annual income increase by an average of nearly $4,000 dollars.
“That’s money directly in folks’ pockets to help cover the costs of housing and child care, and also will directly stimulate our local economy as we recover from this COVID crisis,” he said.
But Republicans point to a Congressional Budget Office analysis that a $15-an-hour minimum wage would lead to job losses for 1.3 million workers, even as the proposal would lift just as many of them above the poverty level.
“It seems to me this bill is a sweet deal — but only if you get to keep your job,” U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, an Arlington Republican, said during debate on a 2019 version of the bill that passed the House. “The negative impacts of such a disastrous bill would be felt in high-income urban areas, but they would be even more severe in lower income rural areas.”
Restaurants say they would be especially hard hit by elimination of the tipped minimum wage, set at $2.13 an hour, which Democrats’ bill calls for phasing out by 2027.
The Texas Restaurant Association says the bill stands to overshadow coronavirus relief efforts of the Biden administration “by the possibility that restaurants may have to absorb a dramatic hike in costs at a time when they can barely keep their doors open.”
The fiscally conservative Employment Policy Institute estimated Texas could lose more
than 370,000 jobs and the rightwing Heritage Foundation estimated the losses in Texas could be closer to 1 million.
“I would argue we shouldn’t be raising the minimum wage in a normal time … but this would be a horrible time to talk about raising the minimum wage,” said Vance Ginn, chief economist at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former budget official for the Trump administration.
Ginn said lawmakers should instead be focused on improving workforce development programs and removing barriers for workers trying to get a better wage, such as occupational licenses.
But research has shown such losses have not happened in states and cities that have raised the minimum wage in recent years.
The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California at Berkeley found wage increases in six cities had no significant negative effect on employment in those cities in a 2018 study that focused on food service jobs.
A separate five-year study that focused on the effects at McDonald’s restaurants found many paid workers above the new minimum to retain employees, rather than cut them. Another study compared New York City — where minimum
wage doubled — to 12 other cities where wages stayed flat and found restaurant job growth was greater in New York than the others as wages there increased.
There is some evidence that Democrats’ proposal is a popular one. In November, 60 percent of voters in Florida backed a proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found 67 percent of Americans supported increasing the minimum in 2019. And 2016 polling by the University of Texas at Austin found 62 percent of Texans supported raising the federal minimum.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston
Democrat, said “everything is on the table” to pass the bill, but she is hopeful that Democrats could build support in Congress by showing Republicans how many people in their districts could benefit.
She also said the bill gives businesses five years to figure out how to make the wage increases possible.
“In my district, you’re talking about 48 percent of the workers,” she said. “It’s 180,000 workers, 180,000 families we can lift up and provide a way to be able to support their families and to be able to enjoy the economy.”