$10 minimum wage in Pennsylvania?
Two Republicans, including Sen. Pat Browne, are calling for it
Gov. Tom Wolf and Democratic lawmakers have been calling for an increase in the state’s $7.25 an hour minimum wage, and now they are finding support for this initiative in the Senate Republican Caucus.
Sens. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie County, and Pat Browne, R-Lehigh County, are proposing to introduce legislation that seeks to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour and permanently index it to inflation. They also propose setting the $2.83 an hour tipped wage rate at 40% of the minimum wage.
Pennsylvania is tied with Virginia in having the nation’s lowest minimum wage that federal law allows, according to information provided by the state’s Independent Fiscal Office. If it were set at $10 this year, the commonwealth’s minimum rate would be higher than 10 other states.
Laughlin said polls show most Americans think the minimum wage needs increased. An informal Facebook poll he conducted last year overwhelmingly showed that to be the case with $10 an hour being the sweet spot as to where they thought it should be set. Laughlin said polls show most Americans think the minimum wage needs to be increased. An informal Facebook poll he conducted last year overwhelmingly showed that to be the case with $10 an hour being the sweet spot as to where they thought it should be set.
“I think it’s a reasonable step. I think it won’t kill all of our small businesses that are kind of at the bottom rung,” he said. Plus, he points out it pushes it beyond the $9.50 per hour rate by 2022 that was proposed in legislation the Senate passed in 2019 but never reached the governor’s desk.
The proposal remains lower than what Wolf wants. The governor has proposed raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour this year, with annual increases until it reaches $15 in 2027. The issue’s strongest Democratic legislative champions — Sen. Tina Tartaglione of Philadelphia and Rep. Patty Kim of Dauphin County — have been pushing for a path to $15 per hour as well.
Leaders in the business community have strongly opposed Wolf ’s proposal. They argue it is ill-timed to hit business owners with an increase in their labor costs as they are still coping with the fallout from the COVID19 business closures and ensuing restrictions. Laughlin said that is a fair point. However, he added, given the slow grind of the legislative process, “we’ll be well beyond the pandemic and most of these industries will be alive and well by the time this might take effect.”
Kim, who has been pushing for years to raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, said she finds it encouraging that more lawmakers acknowledge it is too low. “We’ve known this for a very long time,” she said. “If this bill passed, people working full-time for $10 an hour will still be living in poverty. The yearly salary at $10 an hour is below $20,000. I don’t know how someone, let alone with children, can survive on that.” She called it “a first step to having a real conversation on getting us to a livable wage.”
Tartaglione also is encouraged. Every day she’s on the Senate floor, she offers the count of the number of days since 2006, the last time the Legislature last passed a minimum wage bill. As of Friday, her count was 5,375 days. She sponsored the bill that raised the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.15 an hour. It got raised in 2009 to $7.25 when the Congress acted to raise it.
Seeing two of her GOP colleagues now willing to introduce a minimum wage bill, Tartaglione said, “Maybe they are listening to me every day as I give the countdown on how many days it has been since we gave low-wage workers a raise.” Tartaglione added: “It is the first time the other side of the aisle has come forth with a bill and the fact that it’s indexed to the CPI ... I just wish it was a little more competitive to our surrounding states.”
Maryland’s rate is $11.75 an hour and in New Jersey, it’s at $12 an hour. All of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states have a higher minimum wage. If it came down to having to vote on raising it to $10 an hour, Tartaglione said she would likely support it because of what it would mean to the tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians now earning $7.25 an hour.
“From $7.25 to $10, how could I tell people you don’t deserve that when people doing the same exact job in New Jersey and Maryland get much, much more,” she said. “We can’t turn away from giving them a raise. I wish it was higher but we’ll see.”
Laughlin said the most significant part of the bill in his view is having the rate indexed to inflation. He said had that been done when it was first put into place, this issue wouldn’t have haunted lawmakers all these years. Tartaglione said she tried to insert that into her bill back in 2006 but was told that would kill the bill. “I think indexing it to inflation is the right thing to do,” Laughlin said.
But Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business & Industry, disagrees. “I will tell you automatically indexing it is a problem for a lot of our people,” Barr said. “They don’t want to give someone a raise just because they’ve been there. They like people to earn their raises and having your labor rates go up every year simply because the government says they have to go up is a problem.” However, he was not outright opposed to having a dialogue about an increase in the minimum wage, just as long as businesses get something in return to help lower their costs of doing business in some other way. “If you guys want to go to $10, we’ll have a discussion about where we can get some assistance for small business where we can offset some other costs and regulatory costs, red tape costs or actual labor costs,” Barr said. “We’ve always said we’re willing to do that.”
He said it was that kind of tradeoff that led to the Senate passing a bill with a modest raise in the minimum wage two years ago. In exchange, the governor at that time agreed to drop his proposed regulatory effort to mandate overtime for more salaried, private sector workers that business groups opposed.
‘We will get more support’
The other factor at play this time around is the increased discussion at the federal level about raising the minimum wage.
President Joe Biden is calling for gradually raising the minimum until it hits $15 in 2025. Laughlin said it is significant that Browne, a veteran lawmaker who is the Senate appropriations committee chairman, is joining him in this effort. Browne’s involvement “really makes a statement that this is kind of the right place to be right now,” Laughlin said. “I do think we’re going to start to get some traction on it.” He said many elected officials, especially those up for reelection in 2022, look to polls to guide their positions.
The latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll showed 67% of the state’s registered voters support increasing the state’s minimum wage. He figures some might come around to supporting the $10 minimum hourly wage to increase their chances of winning another term.
Laughlin said he sees the proposed legislation as a way to get the conversation started. It may take until the fall or next spring to begin moving, given the opposition amongst Republicans and others. But he said he is optimistic about its chances. “I think we will get more support,” Laughlin said. “I also don’t think the business community is going to fight us all that much on it, maybe a little bit but most of the small businesses that I talked to are fairly supportive of the number I put forth.”