State House approves minimum wage hike; Malloy to sign bill

A bill to increase Connecticut”™s minimum wage by 75 cents to $9 an hour by 2015 has passed both houses of the legislature and will be signed into law by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

After the state Senate approved the measure May 23 by a narrow margin, the House of Representatives approved the increase on May 28, just before midnight, in a vote that fell largely along party lines.

Malloy said he would sign the bill into law, raising the state”™s minimum wage from $8.25 an hour to $8.70 an hour effective next January and by another 30 cents to $9 an hour in January 2015.

“This change will make it just a little easier for working people in our state without adversely impacting the business community,” Malloy said in a statement following House passage. “This is the right thing to do for hard-working men and women, and the right thing to do for families.”

The wage hike was approved after the state Senate amended the initial proposal, which had called for an increase of $1.50 over two years and would have brought the state”™s minimum wage to $9.75 an hour. An amendment also eliminated a provision calling for automatic wage increases tied to the consumer price index.

The state”™s minimum wage was last raised in 2010 to $8.25 an hour, which is the second-highest minimum wage in New England behind Vermont, at $8.60 an hour.

Efforts to raise the state”™s minimum wage last year were defeated. Similar efforts to raise the minimum wage are underway in Albany and Washington, D.C.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed legislation to increase New York”™s minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour over the next three years. A bill was also introduced in the U.S. Senate in March to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour within two years of approval. No further action has taken place on the bill, however.

While supporters have stood by the increase, saying it will help workers attain a minimum level of financial security, critics have contended that it will lead to fewer jobs, effectively hurting the same group of people the bill is trying to help.

According to a study commissioned by the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, the cost to cover a Connecticut resident”™s basic needs requires a full-time wage of at least $10.56 an hour. To cover basic needs with a moderate amount of emergency savings, a person needs to earn $17 an hour.

But Andrew Markowski, director of the Connecticut chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said companies simply can”™t afford the increase, given the weak economic recovery.

“There”™s not an economist in Connecticut or anywhere else who would argue that the state”™s economy is strong enough to absorb another arbitrary increase in the cost of creating jobs,” Markowski said in a statement prior to the House vote.