Republicans in Congress Vote Against Minimum Wage Workers—Again
Oct. 19—For the second time this year, Senate Republicans voted against giving the nation’s lowest-paid workers a pay raise, killing a proposal by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to boost the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour. Yet members of Congress are set to give themselves their eighth pay raise since the last minimum wage increase in 1997. The new pay raise for Congress means the salaries of senators and representatives have gone up by $31,600 since 1997 while minimum wage workers still earn only $10,700 a year.
Senate Democrats also successfully beat back a second proposal by Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), which would have raised the minimum wage but that included draconian provisions to exempt millions of workers from the minimum wage, cut overtime pay and weaken job safety and health protection.
Under the Enzi amendment, Fair Labor Standards Act protections for all workers at businesses with revenues up to $1 million would be eliminated. In 1997, 6.8 million employees worked at firms with revenues of between $500,000 and $1 million, according to the nonprofit Economic Profit Institute (EPI).
In addition, the Enzi amendment would have abolished the 40-hour workweek and replaced it with an 80-hour, two-week work period. Today, those who work 50 hours in one week and 30 the next receive 10 hours of time-and-a-half overtime pay. Under the amendment, such workers would no longer get overtime pay, making mandatory overtime cheaper for employers, according to EPI.
Kennedy originally proposed a minimum wage amendment to the Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. But in an effort to gain support for passage of a minimum wage increase, he later offered a compromise amendment that would have boosted the minimum wage by $1.10 an hour.
Full-Time Minimum Wage Earners Often Earn Less than the Poverty Rate
At the current minimum wage level, a full-time, year-round minimum wage worker in 2005 will earn $5,378 less than the $16,090 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty. A family’s annual average health care premiums exceed annual pay at the minimum wage.
EPI reports some 7.3 million workers who earn between $5.15 an hour and $7.25 an hour would have benefited directly from Kennedy’s proposed $7.25 an hour increase, and 8.2 million more workers who earn slightly more than $7.25 an hour also would benefit from the spillover effect of an increase.
Saying ‘No’ to a minimum wage raise is outrageous and shameful,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
With the minimum wage frozen since 1997, 15 states and the District of Columbia have set minimum wage rates above the federal floor.
