Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Once on the fringe, the $15 minimum wage gains traction
It started in 2012 with a group of protesters outside a McDonald’s demanding a $15 minimum wage — an idea that even many liberal lawmakers considered outlandish. In the years since, their fight has gained traction across the country, including in conservative states with low union membership and generally weak labor laws.
On Friday, 20 states and 32 cities and counties raised their minimum wage, with the pay floor reaching or exceeding $15 an hour in 27 of these places, according to a report released last week by the National Employment Law Project, which supports minimum-wage increases.
The movement’s strength — a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage in Florida to $15 by 2026 was passed in November — could put renewed pressure on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour, where it has been since 2009. President-elect Joe Biden has endorsed $15 an hour at the federal level and other changes sought by labor groups, like ending the practice of a lower minimum wage for workers such as restaurant employees who receive tips.
But even without congressional action, labor activists said they would keep pushing their campaign at the state and local levels.
Workers during the coronavirus pandemic have been subject to furloughs, pay cuts and decreased hours. Low-wage service workers have not had the option of working from home, and the customer-facing nature of their jobs puts them at greater risk for contracting the virus. Many retailers gave workers raises — or “hero pay” — at the beginning of the pandemic, only to quietly end the practice in the summer, even as the virus continued to surge in many states.
Because many hourly service workers are Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian, people of color stand to gain the most from minimum-wage increases.
Some economists say lifting the minimum wage will benefit the economy and could be an important part of the recovery from the pandemic recession. That is partly because lower-income workers typically spend most of the money they earn, and that spending primarily takes place where they live and work.
Many business groups counter that increasing the minimum wage will hurt small businesses, already beleaguered by the pandemic.
Increasing the minimum wage could lead employers to lay off some workers in order to pay others more, said David Neumark, an economics professor at the University of California at Irvine.
“There’s a ton of research that says increasing minimum wages can cause some job loss,” he said. “Plenty workers are helped, but some are hurt.”
A 2019 Congressional Budget Office study found that a $15 federal minimum wage would increase pay for 17 million workers who earned less than that and potentially another 10 million workers who earned slightly more. According to the study’s median estimate, it would cause 1.3 million other workers to lose their jobs.