State Sen. Christine Tartaglione and U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle last week held a Zoom call to detail their efforts to raise the minimum wage for the state and the nation.
Tartaglione announced she will introduce legislation that would raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $12 per hour this year and an additional 50 cents each year until it reaches $15.
Then, the rate would be adjusted annually based on the Consumer Price Index, with raises taking effect automatically each year as prices increase. In addition, Tartaglione’s legislation would eliminate the subminimum wage for tip-earners such as servers and bartenders (which is set at $2.83 per hour) and would repeal preemption, which prevents local governments in the state from raising the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.
Boyle discussed the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, which has been introduced in the Senate and House. The bill proposes to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour over four years. Boyle is a House cosponsor.
Pennsylvania’s minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, the same rate as the federal minimum. The legislature last raised the minimum wage in 2006.
“It is far too long,” Tartaglione said.
Tartaglione, minority-party chairwoman of the Senate Labor and Industry Committee, was the primary sponsor of that bill, which raised the wage from $5.15 to $7.15.
In 2009, Congress raised the federal minimum wage to $7.25, and Pennsylvania’s rate followed suit.
Twenty-nine states have adopted minimum wages higher than the federal rate, including all six of Pennsylvania’s immediate neighbors. Nine states have adopted a $15 minimum wage.
Tartaglione noted that even conservative Florida voters passed a $15 minimum age in November. She added that, since 2014, many states and dozens of cities have raised the minimum wage above $7.25. Yet, until the pandemic, the nation’s unemployment rate was at a 50-year low.
Tartaglione recalled critics in 2006, when her legislation raised Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $7.15 an hour, saying it would kill businesses.
“They were wrong then, and they will be wrong now,” she said.
Tartaglione and Boyle both said the minimum wage debate is an economic issue.
“This is the right thing to do,” Boyle said.
At the same time, they said the issue is a moral one. Full-time workers making minimum wage fall below the federal poverty line.
“That is wrong,” Boyle said.
Boyle pointed out that the Raise the Wage Act passed the House last session. There were a few Republicans who voted for it and a half-dozen Democrats who opposed it. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, though, did not take up the measure.
Now, the Senate is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties. She and President Joe Biden support the bill, and Democrats still control the House.
Boyle said Senate Democrats’ most moderate member, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, is expected to support passage, so the Raise the Wage Act appears like it could become law.
“I am quite confident it will pass,” Boyle said. ••
