Lawmakers Hear Hard Push To Boost Minimum Wage
Efforts to boost the minimum wage for the first time in five years drew huge crowds to the State House Tuesday where Senate President Therese Murray has given the issue a boost this year with her support for addressing the gap between a “living wage” and what minimum wage workers earn.
A hearing before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, co-chaired by Sen. Daniel Wolf and Rep. Thomas Conroy, drew throngs of proponents and a smaller group of critics to Gardner Auditorium, where advocates, union workers and others filled the balconies and spilled into the hallways.
Murray has catapulted the issue to the forefront of the Senate’s agenda this session after years of it simmering below the surface. Though she has not endorsed a specific increase in the minimum wage, the Plymouth Democrat has encouraged a debate and action on the issue this session, which will be her last in charge of the Senate. House Speaker Robert DeLeo said Monday he wants more information on the economic impacts of a wage hike.
Gov. Deval Patrick and Treasurer Steven Grossman have also come out in support of raising the minimum wage. While supporters suggest higher wages will help businesses by increasing consumer spending, critics warn that increasing wages now will stifle growth, slow hiring and make Massachusetts less competitive with neighbors like New Hampshire.
“Increasing the minimum wage is economically unsustainable, detrimental to the very workers whom advocates say they want to help, and damaging to the state’s reputation as a place for business,” said William Vernon, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business.
Massachusetts became the first state in the country in 1912 to adopt a minimum wage law, but supporters of increasing the state’s $8-per-hour minimum rate argued that its value has eroded since a peak in 1968. The Legislature last voted to increase the wage floor in 2006, and the phased-in increase rose to $8 in 2008.
A minimum wage worker earns about $16,600 a year, but would take home over $22,000 with a bump to $11 an hour. Today, about 94,000 workers in Massachusetts earn at or near the minimum wage, and another 398,000 earn less than $11.
Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat, has filed legislation with Rep. Antonio Cabral to raise the minimum wage to $11 over three years, and index it to inflation moving forward. Rep. Denise Provost, of Somerville, has proposed to go further, to $12 per hour by 2015.
“I ask rhetorically what does the Beatles song ‘Hey, Jude’ have in common with the minimum wage. Well as you just heard, both were at their peak in 1968,” Pacheco said.
Pacheco said a minimum wage worker from 45 years ago would be earning $10.58 an hour today when accounting for inflation, or $5,000 more a year. “It’s time that we take a sad song and make it better,” he added.
The senator also noted that voters approved indexing the salaries of legislators to inflation, and predicted they would do the same for minimum wage workers. Nineteen states index their minimum wages to the consumer price index. One in five workers would be impacted by an increase to $11, Pacheco said.
“Massachusetts has a history of leading the rest of the country when it comes to economic justice and social justice issues and it’s time we live up to that legacy,” Pacheco said.
Retailers: Eliminate Extra Pay On Sundays
The Retailers Association of Massachusetts, representing 3,500 small businesses, says Massachusetts already has the seventh highest rate in the country.
"Many Bay State small employers simply cannot afford this increase, and neither can our economy if indeed we are collectively serious in stating that our priority in the Commonwealth is to grow jobs," association president Jon Hurst said.
If the minimum wage is increased, according to Hurst, it must be coupled with the repeal of the "antiquated and discriminatory" requirement that retailers pay employees time and a half to work on Sundays. Hurst said Massachusetts and Rhode Island are the only states with the requirement.
Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Joanne Goldstein testified Tuesday morning for the Patrick administration in support of raising the minimum wage, though the governor has not endorsed a specific rate. “Raising the minimum wage is one of the most effective ways to restore the local spending that powers our economy,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein said any increase in the minimum wage should include a raise for farm workers and tipped workers, whose lower wage rates of $2.63 an hour are based on the minimum wage for non-service workers and among the lowest in the country. Murray, however, said Pacheco’s proposal to pay service workers 70 percent of the minimum wage is “probably higher than I’d be comfortable with” given the fact that tipped workers will automatically receive a raise if the main wage is increased.
According to supporters, most minimum-wage workers are employed at large businesses with more than 100 employees. A UMass-Amherst study found that over a 16-year period, raising the minimum wage does not result in more employment loss than areas with lower minimum wages, Pacheco said.
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