The Illinois state senate is preparing to vote on legislation that would boost the state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour, the first increase since an increase to $8.25, the current rate, was phased in over three years starting in 2006. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the increase would raise wages for more than a million workers, particularly women and minorities, who make up a disproportionate share of minimum wage-earners.

Business leaders, as is typical, oppose the increase, which they say will fall disproportionately on small businesses and cost the state jobs, the Decatur Herald-Review reports:

Mike Palmer, marketing and brand manager for the McLean County Chamber of Commerce, said increases in the minimum wage fall disproportionately on small-business owners, who he said are less able to absorb increases in their labor costs.

Despite claims that the increase would lead to job losses, studies of increases in both federal and state minimum wage increases haven’t shown that to be true. In fact, when states across the country boosted their minimum wages at the beginning of 2012, EPI estimated that the additional money in the economy would actually create 3,000 jobs.

Increasing the minimum wage to $10 would make Illinois one of the few states to make today’s minimum wage as strong as it when it was first implemented. While the current federal minimum is $7.25 an hour, it would take an hourly wage of $9.92 to match the minimum wage’s buying power in 1968.

At the beginning of this year, San Francisco became the first city in the country to raise its minimum wage above $10 an hour, and eight states boosted their own respective minimum wages, providing new benefits to approximately 1.4 million workers. But even in those states, the minimum wage is hardly keeping up with the cost of living — we would need a $9.92-per-hour wage, more than $2 above the current federal minimum, to match the buying power of the minimum wage in 1968.

The minimum wage looks even more paltry when compared to health care costs and college tuition rates, two areas where costs are ballooning at extraordinary rates. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, it would take someone making the federal minimum wage a full year’s worth of work to afford a family health insurance policy, and slightly less than half of a full year’s work to afford tuition at the average public university. That’s far more work than was required by a minimum wage-earner in 1979:

Despite overwhelming evidence that the minimum wage is becoming increasingly insufficient, Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures across the country have opposed efforts to raise it. Instead, they have advocated for lowering the minimum wage or for abolishing it altogether.

Three Missouri Republicans running to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in November were asked during a radio debate on KMOX what the federal minimum wage is and whether they would vote to increase it. None of the three knew what the minimum wage it, but all knew that they would vote against increasing it, regardless.

Host Charlie Brennan asked the three candidates — businessman John Brunner, former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, and Rep. Todd Akin — “What is the federal minimum wage? Would you vote to increase it?” Here are their responses to the first question:

BRENNAN: Okay, do you know what the minimum wage is?

BRUNNER: No sir.

BRENNAN: How about you Sarah Steelman?

STEELMAN: Uh…$7.50 an hour.

BRENNAN: Do you know what the minimum wage is?



AKIN: My guess is its somewhere in the 6 or 7, but I don’t know the exact number right now.



Watch it:

The federal minimum wage (and Missouri’s minimum wage) is $7.25 per hour. Certainly all three should know the wage level at which four million American workers are at or below. Akin, especially, should know, since in 2007 he voted against raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25.

The candidates’ explanations for not wanting to raise the minimum wage ranged from nonsensical (Brunner said his business gave “better than the minimum benefits”) to extreme, with Akin calling for scrapping the minimum wage altogether. “I don’t think the government should be setting prices on wages in any way shape or form,” said Akin.

Steelman was opposed to raising the minimum wage because she “think[s] it’s high enough as it is.” A person working a minimum-wage job for 40-hour work weeks with no vacation would earn just $15,080 over the course of the year, before taxes.

Perhaps explaining their ignorance of the current minimum wage is the fact that none of the three candidates personally live anywhere near it. Akin owns two homes and receives an annual congressional salary of $174,000. Steelman has donated upwards of $400,000 to her own Senate campaign. Brunner tops them all, sporting a net worth of approximately $100 million.

Joseph Williams moved more than 30 times as a child, living in homeless shelters, church basements, and the homes of family friends. Now Williams, a junior safety on the University of Virginia football team, is taking up a cause supporting the contract workers who are barely making enough to get by.

Williams is one of 18 Virginia students participating in a hunger strike — now more than a week long — to protest the poor wages paid to many of the university’s contracted service employees. The strike, organized by the school’s Living Wage Campaign, began on February 17 with the goal of getting a living wage for underpaid employees. “I know first-hand what the economic struggle is like for many of these underpaid workers,” Williams wrote in an essay explaining his participation:

In failing to implement a living wage for its lowest paid employees, the University of Virginia has also failed to uphold the moral standards to which it holds its students. We are engaging in this hunger strike to call attention to the administration’s moral hypocrisy and to finally produce results in the form of a Living Wage. Although I am exhausted, hungry, dry-mouthed, and emotionally taxed, I believe it is my responsibility as a member of the University community, and even more as a member of the human race, to stand up and speak for those whose voices have been silenced and whose livelihoods are marginalized by the policies of the current University administration.

Williams decried the pay disparity between “hundreds of contract workers who may make as little as $7.25/hour” and the university’s top administrators. According to the essay, six of the state’s 10 highest-paid employees are administrators at Virginia. Williams also told the story of one employee who, despite working 40 hours a week, couldn’t afford to pay rent or utility bills.

“We have taken every conventional route towards this goal, garnered wide student, faculty and community support – yet our pleas have been consistently ignored and workers are still paid unjust wages,” Williams wrote. Perhaps the hunger strike and the national notoriety it has received is changing that, though. According to local news reports, University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan plans to meet with the strikers today.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Jane Glynn, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Understandably, in today’s economic climate any job is often perceived as better than no job at all. After all, unemployment remains at 8.5 percent, and 8.1 million people are involuntarily working part-time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find full-time work.

But while getting people back to work is an important goal, it is also important that workers be employed in positions where they can earn a living wage and receive benefits.

Case in point, nearly a quarter of a million jobs were added in the retail trade in 2011, and retail is projected to be one of the fastest growing industries though 2018. According to the National Retail Federation, “Retail Means Jobs,” as the industry supports 1 in 4 jobs in America.

On the surface this looks very promising. But a new report released by City University of New York and the Retail Action Project illustrates how the wages and working conditions of retail workers in New York City are often less than ideal — especially for women and people of color.

They surveyed retail workers in New York City — a major retail hub in the United States — and the findings of their study are stark. While about one-third of the survey respondents were economically supporting at least one family member, the median wage was only $9.50 an hour, with about 12 percent earning only the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

More than half of the retail workers surveyed were employed part-time, with only 29 percent receiving health benefits, and only 44 percent were entitled to paid sick days. Of those workers who did not receive health benefits from their employer, a quarter had no health insurance and slightly more than a third depended on government programs like Medicaid.

The findings were even more disheartening for women and people of color employed in retail, particularly given the fact that they comprise the majority of the workforce. Women earned less money, were more likely to be employed part-time, were less likely to have health coverage, and were less likely to be offered promotions than men. Read more

Our guest blogger is Anne L. Thompson, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project Action Fund.

Bucking conventional GOP opposition to raising the minimum wage, former Governor Mitt Romney said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he favors raising the minimum wage automatically each year so that it keeps pace with inflation.

Asked his position on the minimum wage, Romney responded, “My view has been to allow the minimum wage to rise with the CPI [Consumer Price Index] or with another index so that it adjusts automatically over time.” When asked if he would support that policy as president, he responded, “I already indicated that when I was governor of Massachusetts and that’s my view.” Watch it:

At a subsequent campaign event in New Hampshire, former Speaker Gingrich clashed with Romney on the issue. When asked if he shared Romney’s position, Gingrich said, “No, and I’m surprised that’s his position.” Watch it:

Romney’s support for indexing sharply contrasts with recent Republican-led efforts to weaken minimum wage laws in states such as Maine, Ohio, Florida, and Missouri. In Florida and Missouri, legislators have taken direct aim at statutes that provide for annual indexing of the minimum wage. In New Hampshire, Republicans in the state legislature overturned Governor John Lynch’s (D) veto to pass legislation making it harder for the state to raise its minimum wage.

Romney’s statement reaffirms a position he first took when running for Massachusetts Governor in 2002, but later appeared to back away from when he ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. While Romney’s support for raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation is a step in the right direction, President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage by more than $2 and subsequently index it to inflation goes significantly further toward restoring the value of the minimum wage, which has declined dramatically in the last 40 years.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011 and then indexing it based on the Consumer Price Index. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, Obama’s proposal would generate more than $60 billion in new consumer spending, helping to boost the demand our economy desperately needs to recover. Currently, the federal minimum is just $7.25 per hour, or roughly $15,000 a year for a full-time worker. If it had been indexed based on the Consumer Price Index since 1968, it would be approximately $10.40 today.

Recent polling found that two-thirds of Americans — a bipartisan majority — support raising the minimum wage to $10 and then indexing it to inflation to keep up with the rising cost of living.

In January, San Francisco will officially be the first U.S. city to have a minimum wage of above $10, nearly $3 more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. And that won’t be the only locale in which workers will see a little extra pay in 2012. In fact, eight states will be raising their minimum wage next year, which, according to the Economic Policy Institute, will benefit 1.4 million workers:

There are eight states that have legislated annual, inflation-linked increases in their minimum wage. This “indexing” of the minimum wage ensures that the real value of the lowest-paid workers’ wages does not shrink as normal costs of living go up. On Jan. 1, 2012, minimum-wage workers in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington will all see an increase in their paychecks.

The table below describes the workers affected by the increase. Across these eight states, an estimated 1,045,000 workers will be “directly affected.” These are workers whose current wages are between the existing state minimum wage and the new Jan. 1 minimum wage. In addition, another 394,000 workers will be “indirectly affected” by the increase. These indirectly-affected workers are those whose current wages are just above the new Jan. 1 minimum, and are likely to also see a wage increase as employers adjust their overall pay structures to reflect the new minimum (the “spillover” effect).

The extra money pumped into the economy by the increases should also create about 3,000 jobs. But even with these increases, the minimum wage has a long way to go: It would actually take a minimum wage of about $9.92 today to match the buying power of the minimum wage in 1968.