The campaign to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour fell a step backward in a Senate vote on April 30—a vote that brought cheers from business interests concerned that the increase would be too onerous on employers and jeers from labor groups that claim the current $7.25 minimum is inadequate.
Sixty votes were needed to advance the minimum wage bill, but the vote was 54-42. The bill calls for gradually raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 over 30 months. Further increases would be tied to inflation.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is one organization speaking out against the $10.10 minimum wage. In a statement released the day before the Senate vote, the organization said it opposes the increase “because small businesses are least able to absorb such a dramatic increase in their labor costs.”
“Yet again, lawmakers are targeting the nation’s economic engine—small business owners—with an anti-employer agenda,” NFIB manager of legislative affairs Ashley Fingarson said in the statement. “With increases to health care costs, higher taxes, more costly regulations, and now a dramatic minimum wage increase, small business owners simply can’t afford another excessive government mandate.”
Labor interests slammed the Senate vote. “It’s important to remember that the minimum wage has fallen far behind inflation as productivity has risen, yet workers have been unable to share in the fruits of their labor because corporations are hoarding profits and holding down wages,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said after the vote.
President Barack Obama has been pushing the increase to $10.10. In a statement after the vote, he criticized the senators who kept the bill from advancing. “By preventing even a vote on this bill, they prevented a raise for 28 million hardworking Americans,” he said.
Secretary of Labor Tom Perez also spoke out against the Senate vote. “No one who works full time in the United States should have to raise their family in poverty,” he said. “But that is exactly the situation for millions of people barely surviving on as little as $7.25 per hour. . . . Too many of them are forced to rely on public assistance just to get by.”
Earlier this year, Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour.