Connecticut business owners are facing a new effort to hike minimum wages, closely following similar efforts in New York and Massachusetts.
The state”™s efforts come amid calls by both President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to link the $7.25 federal minimum wage to inflation, with Obama calling for a $9.50 wage.
Meriden state Rep. Chris Donovan, who is speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives, wants to increase the state”™s minimum wage from $8.25 an hour to $9.75, while pegging it as well to cost-of-living increases going forward.
Donovan said 10 states currently index their minimum wage to inflation, in the Northeast only Vermont, which has a minimum wage of nearly $8.50 an hour. Washington currently has the highest minimum wage in the nation at just over $9 an hour.
A New York legislator has proposed raising that state”™s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour and index it to the cost of living. New Jersey”™s minimum wage is likewise $7.25.
“It”™s important that the lowest workers in our society get a boost in the minimum wage on a regular basis,” Donovan said. “I don”™t usually quote Ronald Reagan, but he once said the best welfare program is a productive job.”
Donovan said at the current minimum wage, a single parent or a family of three with one person working (full time) would earn $17,160, which is about $5,000 less than the poverty level.
“Is that high?” Donovan asked. “That”™s not high, for someone working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks out of the year.”
Donovan said some 106,000 workers in Connecticut earn minimum wage, 7 percent of the total workforce. He asserted that many of the jobs Connecticut has recovered since the onset of the recession are low-wage jobs, without citing supporting statistics.
“Every two or three years the General Assembly raises it, and we raise it again,” Donovan said. “We work out a number that seems right at the time, but maybe it isn”™t. So I think it”™s important this year to set a good base to the minimum wage and then have a system using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) whereby we can raise the minimum wage throughout the other years.”
A bill co-sponsored by Bridgeport state Rep. Ezequiel Santiago would raise the minimum wage in two steps, to $9 as of this July and $9.75 in July 2013. Santiago said the state”™s minimum wage would be $10.34 today if its original base had been updated over the years to increases in the CPI.
While some business groups say minimum wage increases cost jobs, state Rep. Diana Urban of North Stonington dismissed any negative economic impact.
“As long as the increase in minimum wage is not greater than 10 percent, it does not have a negative impact on employment,” Urban said. “This is because it gives the chance for markets to adjust, and adjust they do ”¦ In our knowledge-based economy, we have people that simply do not have the skills or the education to get an upper income job.”
