USA TODAY International Edition
Fight for higher minimum wage grows
Battle is contentious heading into 2018 midterm elections
After her state’s minimum wage rose in January to $ 9 from $ 7.50 an hour, Kathy Rondone got an extra $ 20 a week in her paycheck.
“To me that’s not coffee money or spare change,” says Rondone, an administrative assistant who lives in Augusta, Maine. “It is a set of windshield wipers when mine broke in a storm last February. I had $ 20 in the bank, and I was able to replace those wipers when I needed them ... “It’s a really big deal.” As the nation heads into a midterm election year, a movement to raise the minimum wage continues to pick up steam on the heels of pay hikes that have lifted the earnings of low- income workers from Alaska to Washington, D. C.
Advocates in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Vermont are teeing up campaigns for a $ 15- an- hour minimum wage in 2018.
“Some of them started to move forward this year, but typically the minimum wage tends to advance in state legislatures in election years,” says Paul Sonn, general counsel at the National Employment Law Project, which researches and advocates on worker pay issues.
With the federal minimum wage at a standstill since reaching $ 7.25 in 2009, advocates and unions have banded together to boost the earnings of the lowestpaid at the city and state level, arguing that higher wages shore up finances for low- income families who then fuel local economies with their extra spending power.
The latest efforts come in the wake of low- wage workers in 19 states getting a pay bump at the start of this year, while the minimum wage increased in Oregon, Maryland and Washington, D. C., as of July 1, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Altogether, 31 states, as well as the District of Columbia, have a higher minimum wage than the one set by the federal government, says the U. C. Berkeley Labor Center.
And there has been a wave of wage hikes at the local level, with 39 cities and counties approving increases vs. just five municipalities that had done so prior to 2012, says Ken Jacobs, chair of the U. C. Berkeley Labor Center. House Democrats have proposed raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour by 2024, but they may not get far. President Trump did say during the election campaign he would support a $ 10 minimum wage but that the decision should be left up to individual states.
Despite the recent momentum, lifting the minimum wage remains contentious, with some critics saying rapidly rising wages burden businesses and ultimately cost jobs.
In June, separate studies bolstered arguments on both sides. They focused on Seattle. With an initial hike to $ 11 in 2015, the minimum wage is now as high as $ 15 for some employees.
A report from the University of Washington concluded that when wages rose to $ 13 from $ 11 an hour in 2016 — the second phase of an increase that will ultimately see the minimum wage hit $ 15 for all workers by 2021 — businesses may have cut the hours of lowwage employees. Those workers logged roughly 9% fewer hours, and saw an average cut in pay of $ 125 a month, last year.
However, a separate study from U. C. Berkeley that specifically looked at the restaurant industry found the Seattle law led to an increase in the pay of restaurant workers and did not lead to job losses.