With minimum wage hike, justice is rolling
Rick Wilson
Sunday Gazette-Mail (WV), 1/21/07
In the fall of 2005, the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign launched its effort to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level. The West Virginia campaign was announced during a gathering of the state Council of Churches.
Let Justice Roll is now a coalition of nearly 100 religious, community and labor organizations which takes its name from a passage of the Hebrew prophet Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an overflowing stream.”
While a number other states had raised their minimums prior to the launch of the campaign, I’m pleased to say that West Virginia was the first state to do so since it began when the Legislature passed a measure to increase the state minimum in three steps to $7.25 by June 30, 2008.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that due to quirks in the state code, many workers were not covered by the increase.
The West Virginia Code [21-5C-1(e)] excludes from the definition of employer “any individual, partnership, association, corporation, person or group of persons or similar unit if eighty percent of the persons employed by him are subject to any federal act related to minimum wage, maximum hours and overtime restrictions.”
It would be a simple matter in this legislative session to amend the definition of employers so that all workers would be covered, apart from any special exemptions the state may choose to make to protect very small or marginal businesses.
Federal law does not prohibit states from requiring a higher minimum for all workers. The national Fair Labor Standards Act provides at USC sec. 218(a) that “No provision of this chapter or of any order thereunder shall excuse noncompliance with any Federal or State law or municipal ordinance establishing a minimum wage higher than the minimum wage established under this chapter ... .”
Whatever the limitations of the 2006 legislation, its passage did add momentum to similar efforts in other states. Since West Virginia raised its minimum, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina passed legislation to do the same and all minimum wage measures on state ballot initiatives passed overwhelmingly in the November elections.
The momentum has finally reached the federal level. Earlier in January, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure to raise the minimum in stages to $7.25, with all of West Virginia’s delegation voting in favor of the measure.
The bill will face a tougher fight in the Senate, where possibilities include efforts to link it to other measures and/or a filibuster by the minority. President Bush may veto the legislation if it does not contain additional corporate tax cuts.
However things shake out in Washington, I hope the West Virginia Legislature will finish the job it began last year by amending state code to expand the number of workers covered by its minimum wage laws.
If nothing else, this would establish an important precedent and make it harder for low wage workers in West Virginia to be held hostage in the future to a national leadership hostile to the interests of working people.
The federal minimum wage has been allowed to stagnate for 10 years, a new record of neglect. By acting responsibly, the state Legislature can make sure this never happens again.
Wilson is director of the WV Economic Justice Project and publishes The Goat Rope, a public affairs weblog: goatrope.blogspot.com.
Copyright (c) Rick Wilson 2007 |
