Michael O Connor: Raising the minimum wage is good business augustafreepress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from augustafreepress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
While federal policymakers are debating the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, consumer giant Costco with its 180,000 employees announced it will raise its internal minimum wage to $16 an hour. That’s one dollar more than the $15 an hour that workers and labor groups have been demanding for years as a federal minimum wage.
Costco had already raised its starting hourly wage to $14 in 2018 and $15 in 2019. The company says 20 percent of its employees currently earn its minimum wage, according to CNN.
Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., the Biden-Harris administration has been pushing to boost the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of the next COVID-19 relief and recovery package. Some Democratic representatives in Congress are weighing a $12 minimum hourly wage as a compromise. On the other side of the aisle, Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota opposes a $15 minimum hourly wage, saying he earned $6 an hour as a kid which would be $23 an hour
Small Businesses Get a Boost From a $15 Minimum Wage - Center for American Progress americanprogress.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from americanprogress.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Advocates on both sides flood Capitol Hill with calls, emails
Democrats want to make wage increase part of virus relief February 16, 2021 1:24 PM By Megan R. Wilson
A proposal to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 has triggered a fierce lobbying battle on Capitol Hill, pitting some powerful business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against large labor unions and civil rights coalitions.
These groups have been holding virtual meetings and mobilizing grassroots letter-writing and phone call blitzes to sway lawmakers, particularly moderates in both parties, as they consider attaching the wage increase to the larger pandemic relief package sought by President Joe Biden.
Pennsylvania’s lowest paid workers need a pay raise | Opinion
Updated Feb 05, 2021;
Wendell Young IV and Sen. Christine “Tina” Tartaglione
It is rare that you will find the president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, union leaders, advocates, and members of the General Assembly all on the same page. But after a three-hour long hearing hosted by chair of the Democratic Policy Committee Senator Katie Muth at the request of Senators Tartaglione, Haywood and Kane, it seems there might be one issue we could all agree upon: eliminating local government pre-emption for minimum wage laws.
Gene Barr, President of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, spent an hour defending the chamber’s position against a minimum wage increase citing the impact on businesses and job loss it would create. He claimed that a statewide minimum wage increase is not what was needed but instead more investment in resources such as job training and childcare.