By the time the $7.25 minimum wage actually takes effect in 2008 or 2009, the poverty level for a family of three--assuming 4% annual inflation--will hit about $19,000, over 25% more than the minimum wage worker's annual salary.
The record number of states that have passed minimum wage increases--22 states covering nearly 60% of the population of the United States have passed broadly based increases in the minimum wage, and two other states have passed a minimum wage increase for public sector workers--has been one of the most inspiring acts of local resistance to the philosophy of Bush Republicanism.
I am proud to have initiated the successful Pennsylvania effort to raise the minimum wage to $7.15 in 2007. But at the signing ceremony held by an enthusiastic Governor Ed Rendell on July 9, 2006, I noted the inadequacy of what we have achieved so far and pledged to work for further minimum wage increases. Rendell led the applause for my statement.
I am now working out the final details of a proposal to get a minimum wage worker with two dependents out of poverty. The proposal will start at $8.15 in 2008, and hit somewhere around $8.75 in 2009, and somewhere around $9.50 in 2010. My staff and I are checking and rechecking the numbers and the economic assumptions to make certain that we have a viable and defensible proposal.
This same effort should be going on in states and advocacy offices--from the AFL-CIO to grass-roots organizations--around the country. We have succeeded in changing the conversation and changing the lives of minimum wage workers. Now, we must work to make the minimum wage a tool to get people out of poverty, and not just a tool to ameliorate poverty.
All of us--there are many, many thousands--who have worked to raise the minimum wage should be deeply proud of our efforts. But we should not let our pride and our interest in other issues dictate a premature end to our struggle.
We have achieved a first down, and not a touchdown. The traditional goal of minimum wage policy has been to provide a living for a worker and two dependents that placed the family above the poverty line. We have fallen away from that standard, and should return to it.
I picked the $7.15 standard because New York had just enacted it. Pennsylvania enacted it after New Jersey and Delaware had converted it into the Mid-Atlantic standard.
$7.15 must not become a ceiling for Pennsylvania. There is nothing sacred about it.
There is no national standard for minimum wage increases at this time. We should begin to set one. With Democratic gains likely across the nation this year, and with the record number of people involved in minimum wage issues across the nation in the 47 states that have seen a minimum wage increase campaign, we should not give up the fight until we have achieved a national and state minimum wages that take small families--a wage earner and two dependents--out of poverty, and then--at that level--have an annual COLA.
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