More Minimum Wage Woes

We're still chuggin' along inequality road. Last week Congress failed once again to pass a bill that would have led to a $2.10 hourly raise in the federal minimum wage, which has remained unchanged for nearly nine years, since going from $4.75 to $5.15 an hour in September of 1997.

Friday, Aug. 4, Senate Democrats blocked the legislation, which the house had passed the week before. This time, it's not the bill's failure that's pathetic, however. It's the bill itself. The only way Republicans ever let the wage hike make it into legislation was by having it tacked onto a bill that weakened the estate tax, an inheritance tax on the bequests of millionaires. Can anyone say "legislative blackmail?" Democrats who opposed the bill did.

So, we have less than four months to go until Dec. 1, when we beat our minimum wage stagnation record – nine years and three months without an increase. We can do it!

Fortunately for U.S. workers, 22 states, plus the District of Columbia, have raised their minimum wages past the federal level, largely in response to Uncle Sam's inaction. Just this past year, five states – Arkansas, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania – raised their minimum wages, and three others – Maine, Delaware, and Rhode Island, whose minimum wages already surpassed the federal government's – approved additional raises, according to a July 26 policy brief from the Economic Policy Institute. "Fifty-eight percent of the national population now lives in states that have, or are about to have, minimum wages higher than the federal level," the policy brief reads.

The minimum wage is at a 60-year low compared to the pay of workers in other nonsupervisory jobs, according to a June 20 joint brief by EPI and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which also notes that the millions of U.S. workers earning $5.15 an hour can afford to buy the least amount of stuff they have been able to in 50 years. (For more on this, see "Minimum Wage Woes," July 14.) Tidbits like these are largely what have prompted states to step in, concludes the more recent EPI brief, titled "Federal inaction forces states to raise minimum wages."

Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Missouri, Colorado, and Ohio are all at various points on the road to raising their minimum wages. Texas, however, is barely in the car. Not that people aren't trying to get something done. Toni McElroy, chair of Texas ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), has been "holding informal talks with legislators" and also doing some electoral strategizing, "looking for candidates [who] would support our efforts" and trying to help them win.

"We're just going to do what we can do at the local level," McElroy said. "If they won't do it in Washington, we'll just do it state by state."

See www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060726 for a graph comparing the federal minimum wage to that of various states. For further info on minimum wage issues, go to www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage.