Senator Bob Marshall is back again with a new proposal to raise the minimum wage. His bill last session, Senate Bill 39, which would have raised the wage to $10.25 over the course of four years, actually passed the Senate 11-8, but it found it’s death in the House Economic Development/Banking/Insurance/Commerce Committee, a committee that cannot have too many names or subjects, and a committee where progressive legislation goes to die. The doomed legislation would have tied any future increase in the wage after 2020 to the Cost of Living index.
This Senate Bill 10 does the same thing (despite the claim at Delaware Liberal to the contrary). It raises the minimum wage to 0.50 cents in each of the next four years (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. The wage is currently $8.25 an hour. Do some math. 8.25 + .50 +.50 +.50 +.50 = 10.25.
SB10 – RAISING MINIMUM WAGE.
SPONSOR: Marshall, Henry, Baumbach, Bentz, Heffernan, Keeley, Kowalko, McDowell, Osienski, Paradee
YES VOTES:
NO VOTES:
ABSENT:
NOT VOTING:
HISTORY:Released from Senate Labor Committee.
STATUS: On Senate Ready List
While I commend Senator Marshall for his persistence in getting a minimum wage bill passed this bill is totally inadequate to help the people it is meant to serve. The idea of a $15 living wage started back in 2013. If you inflate that to this year at 2% inflation rate that comes out to $16.25 in today’s dollars. The $16.25 is what the living wage should be today and if you phase it in the phase in period should be covered by COLA protection just like the period after implementation. I will not go in to all the reasons why this is important but one recent statistic that was released is that you have to make at least $20 an hour in Delaware just to afford a modest two bedroom apartment. If Delaware’s legislators would vote for their constitutents instead of their businessmen friends and contributors we could actual help the people of the state. It has been proven that implementation of this living wage has increased jobs and sales through the areas where it has been put in place.
$10.25 is pretty modest considering that other places have gotten to $15.00 approved. Should it be more? It should. But it is important to start someplace. I’d like to see some State agency tasked to collect some economic data as a result of this increase to the minimum wage, so there can be a way to push back on the BS that higher wages are job killers.
The good news is that this session it’s been assigned to the Labor Committee rather than to the clearly hostile committee to which it was assigned last session. Now that it’s in a presumably friendlier committee, we will have a chance to try to help nudge it to something that is closer to what Tom O’Hagan is suggesting.