On a Minimum Wage Hike
The federal minimum wage was last increased nearly a decade ago and remains at its 1997 level of $5.15 an hour. Recently, however, Arkansas became the 20th state to raise its own state minimum wage above the federal minimum wage.
Given the relatively stagnant wages of low-income workers during recent years and the surging gas prices of recent weeks, it will not be surprising if pressure builds for more states -- and even the federal government -- to reconsider current minimum wage laws.
Surprisingly, a new Wells Fargo-Gallup Small Business Index poll, conducted March 1-15, 2006, finds significant support among small-business owners for increasing the minimum wage.
Source: Gallup (Read more at the website if you have a paid subscription)
posted by Don Iannone, D.Div., Ph.D. at
Friday, May 19, 2006
1 Comments:
Yes the news from Alaska is exciting. I've read that now over one half of the hourly wage workers in the U.S. are in states with minimum wages above the federal level.
Polls about small business owners are also good news, but it's not those owners individually who are blocking an increase in the federal minwage. The real barrier are the large organizations such as the National Restaurant Association that can lobby Congress with busloads of owners to warn about the catastrophic effects of even the smallest increase. It seems to me that business's strongest opposition to the minimum wage has come not so much from the mom and pop operations, though these are the homey examples that get talked about, but from the corporate chains and their lobbies.
Readers might be interested in my Web site, "Raising the National Minimum Wage: Information, Opinion, Research" at www.raiseminwage.org
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