Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

By Leah Dearborn

Lawmakers are uping the ante as federal minimum wage debate rages with state lawmakers calling for action. In his State of the Union Address this past February, President Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. Today, New York has taken the first step towards achieving that goal at a statewide level. The timesunion.com reports:

State lawmakers settled on a tentative agreement that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $9 an hour as part of the $136.5 billion budget.

The wage boost would be phased in over three years, according to people familiar with the agreement: from $7.25 to $8 by Jan. 1, 2014, then to $9 by Jan. 1, 2016. It won’t be indexed to inflation, a mechanism that would take future increases out of the hands of lawmakers. The increase will make New York’s minimum wage one of the highest in the country, which leaves many of the new bill’s opponents fearful that small businesses will suffer upon its implementation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) made a case at a committee hearing earlier this week, however, that minimum wage should rightfully be closer to $22 an hour, based on current employee production rates.

“If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour. So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker (The Week).” While the Mass. senator was not seriously proposing such a steep wage hike, Warren illustrates some alarming statistics.