House Republicans on Friday unanimously voted down a bill that would have raised the minimum wage. Six Democrats joined them in defeating the effort.

The vote came after a surprise move by Democrats, who tacked onto a jobs training program bill an amendment that would have brought the national $7.25 minimum wage to $10.10 by 2015. But Republicans managed to defeat the effort while approving the bill overall.

A few weeks back, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) came out in support raising minimum wage, responding President Obama’s State of the Union call for a wage increase. Pelosi’s effort, and the effort proposed Friday, would actually bring the minimum wage up higher than Obama’s suggestion of $9.

If the minimum wage were brought up to $10.10 an hour, it would not be a revolutionary hike; rather, it would be indexed to inflation and consistent with historical borrowing power. Had the minimum wage been indexed to inflation in 1968, it would be $10.40.

Our guest blogger is Rachel Curley, an intern at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has been described as a “collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators”, is waging a campaign against workers, especially those in minimum wage jobs with few to no benefits.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) recently released a report that tracks “the concrete legislative campaign that ALEC has conducted over the past two years to translate economic ideology into law.” Since 2011, 105 bills “aimed to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the local level” have been introduced in 31 state legislatures, and of those 105 bills, 67 were “directly sponsored or co-sponsored by ALEC-affiliated legislators,” according to NELP. Already, eleven of the 67 bills sponsored by ALEC members have been signed into law.

The report released by NELP highlights three types of bills introduced in state legislatures that reflect “model” legislation already written by ALEC. The report focuses on living wage and prevailing wage repeal and preemption bills, but it also points to other bills designed to repeal, suspend, and weaken state minimum wage laws, as well as ones that weaken overtime compensation policies.

The first one of these preemption bills surfaced in Wisconsin in 2011. The bill targeted a 2008 Milwaukee ballot measure passed with 69 percent of the vote that required city businesses to provide paid sick leave to workers. In response, the Wisconsin legislature passed a law directly nullifying the paid sick leave ordinance. Judge Thomas Cooper of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court upheld the state law, noting that the Wisconsin legislature had “put a bull’s eye on paid sick days” and that the state was completely within its right to void the Milwaukee ordinance.

One sponsor of the bill in Wisconsin was state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a confirmed ALEC member. He previously supported Gov. Scott Walker in repealing the state’s equal pay law by claiming that “money is more important to men” and that “to attribute everything to so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”

The strategy of ALEC-affiliated legislators, according to NELP, is to repeal current living wage policies or to preempt city and local governments from “establishing a living wage or prevailing wage policy in the first place.” Living wage and prevailing wage policies require employers who receive local government funds to pay their workers according to the cost of living in the area or industry standards for the region.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called on Republican House leadership to take up legislation recently introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) that would raise the federal minimum wage above $10 an hour. Miller and Harkin announced the bill, which would set the minimum wage at $10.10 per hour and index it to inflation so it raised automatically thereafter, this week.

Pelosi cited recent stock gains that pushed markets to record highs even as worker incomes remain stagnant as her reason for backing the legislation, The Hill reports:

“This week, we saw something quite remarkable, the stock market soaring to record heights. At the same time, we see productivity keeping pace,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “But we don’t see income for America’s middle class rising. In fact, it’s been about the same as since the end of the Clinton years.” [...]

“If we are going to honor our commitment to the middle class,” she said, “we have to reflect that intention in our public policy.”

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would bring it in line with its historical borrowing power, which peaked in 1968, and indexing it to inflation would prevent Congress from having to repeatedly raise it to keep up with rising costs. The current wage would be $10.40 had it been indexed to inflation in 1968.

Top Republicans have already signaled their opposition to any increase in the minimum wage, even though 65 Republicans currently serving in Congress voted for the last increase, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007.

Two Democrats plan to introduce legislation today that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, more than a dollar over the proposal President Obama made during February’s State of the Union address. The current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and has not been raised since 2009 as part of legislation signed by President George W. Bush.

The legislation backed by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) and California Rep. George Miller (D) would, like Obama’s proposal, index the minimum wage to inflation so that it keeps up with the cost of living over time. Harkin and Miller told the Huffington Post that raising the minimum wage was “a matter of justice” for low-income workers:

“When you see what’s happened to CEO salaries and compensation since the 1970s, and what’s happened to the minimum wage, it’s just startling,” Harkin said. “We can’t continue on this way. We need a higher minimum wage.”

“People do see the minimum wage as a matter of justice for people who don’t have the ability to bargain for decent wages,” Miller said. “And that’s all this is — it’s a minimum wage. Nobody’s walking away from here rich.”

As Harkin noted, executive salaries have skyrocketed over the last three decades, rising 127 times faster than worker pay. Corporate profits have also risen to record levels, but the minimum wage hasn’t kept up, even as low-wage jobs are becoming more prevalent after the Great Recession. The minimum wage reached its peak buying power in 1968; to equal that buying power today, it would have to be $9.92 an hour. Had it been indexed to inflation in 1968, it would be $10.40 an hour today.

Top Republicans have already come out against raising the minimum wage, but 65 Republicans currently serving in the House or Senate supported the minimum wage increase Bush signed into law in 2007.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour. Some Congressional Democrats have called to increase it all the way up to $10.10 (getting it close to the buying power it had in the 1960s).

But at the state level, conservative lawmakers are trying to go in the opposite direction. According to the National Employment Law Project, lawmakers in 31 states have introduced 105 bills aimed at suppressing workers’ wages, with a little help from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative group that provides model legislation on everything from union-busting to voter disenfranchisement:

Since January 2011, legislators from 31 states have introduced 105 bills reflecting ALEC’s “model” legislation designed to suppress the wages of low-paid workers in the United States — these bills aimed to repeal state minimum wage laws, reduce minimum wage rates for youth and tipped workers, weaken overtime compensation policies, and prevent local governments from establishing living wage ordinances. Of these 105 bills, 67 were directly sponsored or co-­‐sponsored by ALEC-­‐affiliated legislators from 25 different states. [...]

While only 11 of the 67 ALEC-affiliated wage suppression bills were ultimately passed into law, the cumulative impact of the 105 bills that have been introduced over the past two years remains significant. The persistent introduction of legislation to weaken or repeal wage standards drains the political momentum behind improving wages and workplace standards for low-paid workers by forcing a defensive fight over protecting the standards that already exist. As retail and fast-food workers in New York, Chicago, and cities across the country take collective action to improve wages in the nation’s fastest-growing low-wage industries — and as dozens of legislatures consider new proposals to increase minimum wages this year — ALEC’s wage suppression agenda serves as a significant source of inertia undermining the current push for better wages and workplace standards.

The minimum wage already isn’t enough for families to get by, while wage theft is a rampant problem across the country. Chicago, in fact, recently passed one of the nation’s strongest laws protecting workers against wage theft. But ALEC and its conservative allies wants to make it easier to steal money from workers’ pockets, while making it harder for them to get a raise.

As President Obama pushes to increase the national minimum wage, Mississippi Republicans are digging in their heels to prevent any similar efforts in the Hospitality State. A bill working its way through the Republican-controlled Mississippi legislature aims to ensure that no local government enacts a mandatory minimum wage or other worker protections. Mississippi has no statewide minimum wage whatsoever (so it follows the national minimum wage).

The 2012 national Republican platform made clear that the party believes in local decision-making. Endorsing the notion of “solving local and State problems through local and State innovations,” the GOP pledged to “restore the proper balance between the federal government and the governments closest to, and most reflective of, the American people.”

But the idea that local governments might pass legislation to guarantee workers a livable hourly wage scares legislators like State Rep. Jerry R. Turner (R). His proposal, House Bill 141, mandates:

No county, board of supervisors of a county, municipality or governing authority of a municipality is authorized to establish a mandatory, minimum living wage rate, minimum number of vacation or sick days, whether paid or unpaid, that would regulate how a private employer pays its employees.

The bill claims that such a law is “necessary to ensure an economic climate conducive to new business development and job growth in the State of Mississippi.” While it notes that any debate on such matters “should be assigned to the Mississippi Legislature,” it also specifically states that the majority is “not suggesting a state minimum wage or minimum benefit package.” The bill passed the House earlier this month and now awaits action in the Senate’s Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee.

Turner drew attention earlier this year for a bill prohibiting localities from establishing New York City-style regulations on unhealthy foods or requiring additional nutritional labeling at fast food restaurants.

The Obama administration is reviving its push to provide labor protections to home health workers who are often excluded from traditional labor law. According to The Hill, the administration will offer a final rule governing the home health industry soon:

Enactment of the regulations, which are under final review at the White House, would represent a major victory for unions that have fought for decades to win higher pay for direct-care aides. [...]

In recent days, the White House has held multiple meetings with groups that have a stake in the proposal, according to participants and logs maintained by the Office of Management and Budget.

Involved parties on both sides said they expect the White House to issue the rule soon.

Home health workers are not subject to minimum wage or overtime pay laws because the Fair Labor Standards Act exempts those “who provide ‘companionship services’ to people with disabilities and the elderly,” a definition that has been applied to home health workers. But as Sarah Jane Glynn noted, “Home care workers today provide everything from help with eating and dressing to monitoring blood pressure and vital signs,” making them far from simple companions.

The Big Business community is, predictably, opposing the new rule, and Congressional Republicans tried to block it the last time it surfaced. But with the home health industry set to explode in the coming decades, ensuring that those workers get the bare minimum when it comes to labor protections is a no-brainer.

President Obama’s call for a minimum wage increase in Tuesday’s State of the Union address — like nearly all of his proposals — was met with immediate opposition from Congressional Republicans. But six years ago, many of the same Republicans supported a similar proposal backed by Republican President George W. Bush.

A ThinkProgress analysis finds that at least 67 Republicans who are still in Congress today backed an increase in the minimum wage in some form, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Political momentum for an increase began in 2004, after President Bush announced his support for a bill by now-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). After Democrats won majorities of the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, a minimum wage increase became one of their first priorities. The Fair Minimum Wage Act — which also included tax cuts for small businesses — passed the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. When the increase was folded into a larger appropriations bill, it again passed with strong bipartisan support and was eventually signed into law by Bush. 26 House Republicans even signed a letter to then-House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), asking for a vote on a minimum wage increase, including current Representatives Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Peter King (R-NY), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Christopher Smith (R-NJ), and Fred Upton (R-MI). In incremental stages, the law raised the minimum wage from $5.15-per-hour to $7.25.

Though Ryan ultimately voted against the measure, he argued that he supported raising the hourly rate as long as it came with a suitable “offset” of small business relief. “Last year, I supported an increase in the minimum wage because it also included tax relief measures for employers to offset the cost of the proposed minimum wage increase,” he noted in a floor speech, as he announced “with great regret” that he could not back the bill without more small business tax cuts.

Like most Republicans, however, Ryan struck a far more defiant tone in response to Obama’s proposal, dispensing of any caveats and telling CNN that “I think it actually is counterproductive in many ways. You end up costing jobs from people who are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.”

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President Obama’s State of the Union proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour and index it to inflation so that it keeps up with growth in the economy was quickly rebuked by top Republicans like Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who claim the minimum wage will kill jobs and hurt small businesses.

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) chose a different reason to oppose the proposal today. A stronger minimum wage, Blackburn said, would negatively affect the ability of young workers to enter the workforce as teenagers, and would prevent them from learning responsibility like she did when she was a teenage retail employee making a seemingly-measly $2.15 an hour in Mississippi:

BLACKBURN: What we’re hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity.

Watch it:

Making $2.15 an hour certainly does sound worse than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

At that time, the minimum wage was $1.60, equivalent to $10.56 in today’s terms. Today’s minimum wage is equivalent to just $1.10 an hour in 1968 dollars, meaning the teenage Blackburn managed to enter the workforce making almost double the wage she now says is keeping teenagers out of the workforce.