Minimum Wage

Earlier this week, I reported that the New York Assembly passed a bill to raise the state minimum wage but Illinois postponed a Senate Executive Committee vote on a minimum wage bill. Today, I’m happy to report that I was misinformed about Illinois: the Senate Executive Committee voted on – and passed – a bill that would raise the minimum wage from $8.25 per hour to its historic high, estimated to be at least $10.65 per hour by 2014, then index the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation. The bill would also eliminate the tipped minimum cash wage of $4.95 per hour, making tipped employees entitled to the same minimum wage as other workers.

Once again, this is great news for women, who are nearly six in ten minimum wage workers in Illinois. For a mom working full time to support two kids on the minimum wage, a raise to $10.65 per hour would mean an extra $4,800 per year – enough to lift her family out of poverty. Base earnings for tipped workers who make the current minimum cash wage of $4.95 per hour would more than double. Nationally, nearly two-thirds of workers in tipped occupations are women.

A minimum wage increase would also be great news for the Illinois economy. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising Illinois’ minimum wage to $10.65 over four years would generate about $2.5 billion in additional economic activity and around 20,000 new jobs. More than one million Illinois workers would get a raise – 56 percent of them women. Read more »

Good news from New York on the minimum wage: the state Assembly passed a bill yesterday that would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour next year and index it to keep pace with inflation. The bill would also raise the minimum cash wage for food service workers (a particularly large segment of tipped workers) from $5.00 to $5.86 per hour and index it for inflation.

This is particularly good news for women, who make up close to two thirds of minimum wage workers in New York. A mom with two kids working full time at $7.25 per hour makes just $14,500 per year, leaving her family thousands of dollars below the poverty line. Raising the minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would provide a meaningful boost of $2,500 each year. And raising the tipped minimum wage for food service workers – like restaurant servers, who are mostly women – to $5.86 per hour would increase their earnings by more than $1,700 per year. Moreover, because women are the majority of minimum wage workers in New York, increasing the minimum wage could help to close the gap between men’s and women’s typical earnings in the state. 

But the bill still needs to pass the Senate before it can get to Governor Andrew Cuomo (who has said he supports a minimum wage increase “in principle”). And unfortunately, a number of senators have expressed opposition to the minimum wage bill, trotting out false and tired arguments that an increase would “kill jobs.” Read more »

Connecticut’s legislative session ended last night at midnight. Unfortunately, the Senate did not take up the minimum wage bill that passed the House last month, so many workers struggling to get by on $8.25 an hour will have to wait until at least 2013 to get a raise. (The Senate did act at the last minute to approve a bill permitting the keeping of reindeer year-round, though, so to any Connecticut readers who always wished for Rudolph as a pet, you’re in luck!)  

But all is not lost. As I mentioned earlier this week, bills to raise the state minimum wage are still pending in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, and an increase looks likely to be on Missouri’s ballot in November.

And in a very exciting development at the federal level today, Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Bruce Braley (D-IA) just introduced the Rebuild America Act in the House. Like its companion bill introduced by Senator Harkin, the bill would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour over three years and then index it for inflation, and would also gradually raise the minimum cash wage for tipped workers from $2.13 per hour to 70 percent of the minimum wage. Read more »

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

As you probably know, Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday. Here at the National Women’s Law Center, we care a lot about mothers – not only our own (although you’re totally awesome, Mom!), but also the millions of women across the country who are trying to raise kids, care for their own aging parents, climb the career ladder, save for retirement, and protect their health – often all at the same time, and often with the odds stacked against them. My work in the Family Economic Security program focuses on advancing policies that help low-income women and their families make ends meet, and if you’ve seen any of my blog posts lately, you’ll know one policy change that could really help working moms is an increase in the minimum wage. 

Women are nearly two-thirds of workers making the federal minimum wage or less. Many of them are mothers struggling to support their families on earnings of less than $15,000 a year for full time work. And on top of their tough jobs – waiting tables, caring for children and homebound seniors, cleaning homes and offices – many face the nearly impossible task of finding affordable care for their children while they’re at work, often without a single paid sick day to fall back on in an emergency.

The Rebuild America Act, introduced by Senator Harkin (D-IA) in late March, would help address several challenges that low-income working moms face by raising the minimum wage, including the minimum cash wage for tipped workers; expanding funding for child care assistance; and guaranteeing paid sick days. Read more »

Yesterday we told you about several states in which efforts are underway to raise the minimum wage. Today’s update comes from Illinois, where the Senate Executive Committee will vote next week on a bill that would give minimum wage workers a substantial boost in pay. Nearly six in ten minimum wage workers in Illinois are women.

The Illinois bill (S.B. 1565) would gradually raise the minimum wage from its current level of $8.25 per hour to its estimated historic high, which would be $10.65 per hour, and then index the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation. S.B. 1565 also would eliminate the tipped minimum cash wage of $4.95 per hour, making tipped employees – mostly women – entitled to the same minimum wage as other workers.

Increasing the minimum wage to $10.65 per hour, an estimate of its historic high, would increase a worker’s annual earnings by $4,800 per year – enough to lift a mom with two kids out of poverty. Tipped minimum wage workers will see an even bigger increase of $11,400 per year if the bill becomes law. Since the majority of workers who would get a raise are women, S.B. 1565 could also help narrow the gender wage gap in Illinois; in 2011, the typical Illinois woman working full time was paid just 76 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. Read more »

I hope you saw the new infographic we posted this morning. I think it makes a pretty clear case for raising the minimum wage! Fortunately, in recent months, quite a few states have been getting the message: legislatures in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are all considering bills to increase the state minimum wage, including the minimum wage for tipped workers. And in Missouri, state advocates just delivered 175,000 signatures in support of a voter initiative that would get a minimum wage increase on the ballot in November.

As of today, the bill in Connecticut (H.B. 5291) – which passed the state House of Representatives last month – is closest to being law. At $8.25 per hour, Connecticut’s minimum wage is higher than the federal level ($7.25 per hour), but still leaves a mother with two kids more than $1,000 below the poverty line if she works full time. H.B. 5291 would raise the state minimum wage to $8.75 per hour over two years and raise the minimum cash wage for tipped workers from $5.69 to $6.04 per hour by 2015. Read more »

Women deserve a raise!

Some more numbers that underscore the importance for women of raising the minimum wage:

• Annual earnings for a full-time minimum wage worker: $14,500;
• Minimum cash wage for tipped workers: $2.13;
• What the typical woman working full time, year round makes for every dollar paid to her male counterpart: 77 cents.

Help Us Raise the Minimum Wage

Share your story about what it takes for women and families to live on the minimum wage.

$14,500.

That is what a woman makes working full time for a full year at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

That's right — only $14,500 a year, which is below the federal poverty line for a family of three. For tipped workers, the federal minimum cash wage is only $2.13 an hour! And nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers and tipped workers are women.

We want to increase the minimum wage for all workers, including tipped workers, to give working families a boost and help close the wage gap.

But we can't do it without your help. We want to hear about what it takes to live on minimum wage from women who've experienced it.

If you have a story to share, could you share it with us? Read more »

On April 17, women’s earnings from 2011 and 2012 will finally match their male counterparts’ 2011 earnings. Yes, it takes women a little over 15 months to make the same income that it takes men to make in 12. How is it that in 2012, women are still only making 77 cents to a man’s dollar? We have been fighting for equality for so long! We have had success – like the Equal Pay Act and, more recently, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. But we still have a long way to go.

We have even further to go now that the Wisconsin legislature and the Governor of Wisconsin repealed the state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which beefed up the penalties for pay discrimination and the relief available to victims. This means that if a woman in Wisconsin finds that she is being paid less than her male counterpart, she has fewer remedies and less relief available to her than she did before.  And given that pay discrimination is hard to identify and hard to challenge, that’s definitely a step in the wrong direction.

The Wisconsin Restaurant Association was among the supporters of the repeal, which is pretty unsettling to me. Currently the tipped minimum wage stands at $2.13/hour, where it’s been stuck since 1991. Women make up two-thirds of employees in tipped jobs. Read more »

Thank Senator Harkin for Working to Rebuild America

The Rebuild America Act lays out a vision of a better America for women and their families.

Now this is more like it! You and I both know that we've had to spend a lot of time playing defense to protect critical programs and hard-won rights. But while we've been on the defensive, we've also been advocating for policies that lift up and support ALL Americans and that provide a clear path to a better future.

Now our efforts are paying off. Just yesterday, Senator Tom Harkin introduced the Rebuild America Act, which would improve economic security for women and their families. The Rebuild America Act makes investments to promote widely shared prosperity and finances them in a fair and fiscally responsible way.

This type of opportunity doesn't come along every day. Join us in saying 'Thank you!' to Senator Harkin for introducing this important bill!

What kinds of prosperity are we talking about? First and foremost — jobs. The Rebuild America Act recognizes the need for quantity and quality when it comes to job creation. The bill provides funding to help states and localities hire teachers and other public service workers — an especially crucial sector for women, who have lost nearly 70 percent of the public sector jobs cut since June of 2009. It also invests in infrastructure and manufacturing — and increases support for job training and education to expand access to these jobs among underrepresented populations. Read more »