Minimum wage bill passes in House, awaits Senate panel vote
By Brigid Curtis Ayer
A bill to raise Indiana’s minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.50 per hour by September 2008 passed the Indiana House by a 71-29 vote and awaits approval by a Senate panel.
House Bill 1027, authored by Rep. John Day (D-Indianapolis), would raise Indiana’s minimum hourly wage in three stages. The wage would increase to $6 per hour on Sep. 1, 2007, $6.75 per hour on March 1, 2008, and $7.50 per hour on Sept. 1, 2008.
The bill, which received a hearing on March 28 by the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee, drew a large crowd of supporters and opponents.
In a letter, Rep. Day gave the 11 members of the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee two reasons why they should support the minimum wage bill.
“If Indiana’s wage rates had kept up with the rate of inflation over the past 20 years, it would be $8.50 per hour,” he wrote.
Rep. Day also told panel members that it’s not just young people working for spending money who are primarily minimum wage earners. A 1998 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said that nationally 36 percent of minimum wage workers are ages 16-19. Sixty percent are adults, and 40 percent of those are the sole wage earner of the family.
“This group should be our focus,” Rep. Day wrote.
Glenn Tebbe, Indiana Catholic Conference executive director, testified before the Senate panel in support of the bill. “The Indiana Catholic Conference supports an increase in the minimum wage as a matter of justice for the worker and the family,” he said. “The principle of a just wage is integral to our understanding of human work. Wages should be adequate for workers to provide for themselves and their families in dignity.”
Beth Mickelson, public policy and legislative specialist for the Children’s Bureau Inc., who also testified in support of the bill, said, “An increase in the minimum wage has a real benefit for families living in poverty, which directly affects the well-being of children. Twenty-two percent, or 49,638, of all Hoosier workers have incomes which put them below the federal poverty rate. This is simply not acceptable for working families.
“What’s even more staggering and upsetting is the U.S. has the second highest child poverty rate in the world among developed nations,” Mickelson said. “The only nation which has a higher child poverty rate is Mexico.”
More than a dozen groups testified in support of the minimum wage bill, including a representative from the Gary chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Lindsey Mintz of the Jewish Community Relations Council and a retired member of the United Auto Workers.
Opponents to the bill, including Rep. Matt Bell, who testified against the bill in both the House and Senate, believe those receiving the minimum wage are typically teens who work so they can have spending money.
Rep. Bell said that raising the minimum wage will only hurt small businesses, causing some to close, thus eliminating the jobs for people that the bill is trying to help. A representative from the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and one from the Indiana Manufacturers Association also testified against the bill.
But Tebbe told Senate panel members, “Information provided by [the] census survey of 2006 shows minimum wage earners are not only teenagers. Nearly half, or 48 percent, of minimum wage earners are the household’s chief bread winner, meaning that no higher paid family members live with them.”
The federal minimum wage bill has also passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is awaiting passage in the U.S. Senate. The federal bill would raise the minimum wage in three phases, up to $7.25 per hour by 2009.
Tebbe explained that even if the federal minimum wage is raised, it does not cover thousands of workers in Indiana who do not fall under the federal law.
“Indiana needs to set its minimum at a reasonable level to ensure that workers and their families are given the opportunity to access what is needed for one’s material, social and spiritual
well-being,” Tebbe said.
Indiana currently has about 1.8 million hourly wage earners. About two percent, or 36,000, of them, make $5.15 per hour or less.
Rep. Day concluded his letter to Senate panel members by saying, “Those who most need the increase cannot hire a lobbyist to make their case. They are depending on us.”
Bills must be passed out of committee by April 4 to advance this session.
(Brigid Curtis Ayer is a correspondent for The Criterion.) †