By Jesse Russell

On Monday minimum wage earners in Illinois received a big bump in their pay checks as that state’s wage went from $6.50 per hour to $7.50 per hour. The increase is the first of four annual increases which will eventually see the wages cap put at $8.25 in 2010. Nearly 310,000 Illinois workers will benefit from the wage increase.

By Doug Cunningham

The federal minimum wage increase has finally been passed, attached to the Iraq war spending authorization. The AFL-CIO says working families have won a major victory with the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade. Republicans had mobilized opposition to the minimum wage hike as they added tax breaks for business to the minimum wage increase. It somehow didn’t occur to Republicans to add minimum wage hikes to the $276 billion in corporate tax breaks they approved during the ten years when there was no increase in the minimum wage.

Minimum wage became collateral damage when President vetoed the Iraq War spending bill. Jesse Russell reports:

Little attention was given to the decision by Democratic leadership to attach the minimum wage increase, a key part of their legislative agenda, to the Iraq War spending bill – a bill they knew President George W. Bush had planned to veto. Under the bill the federal minimum wage would have increased from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour and would have provided tax relief for small businesses. Bush has said in the past that he would support such a measure, but was unwilling to let it pass while being tied with military funding with benchmark dates for U.S.

By Doug Cunningham

Maryland’s governor is about to sign the nation’s first state law requiring contractors to pay workers a living wage. After an energetic campaign by labor, civil rights activists and religious leaders the state legislature passed the law requiring service contractors doing business with the state of Maryland $11.30 an hour in urban areas and $8.50 an hour in rural areas. The legislature passed a living wage law in 2004 but it was vetoed by the then-Republican governor. A Democrat replaced him so the living wage law will not be blocked.

Payday lending has impacted the poor across the country – and not positively. Jesse Russell has more:

Payday lending – also known as predatory lending – as it targets the nation’s most vulnerable, has become such a problem that states have begun stepping up to place restrictions. Just last week South Carolina Senate panel voted to restrict payday lending, but the bill heavily targets borrowers and not the lenders. Currently lenders can charge $15 for every $100 borrowed, that’s a 390 percent increase over the year. The legislation would limit borrowers to five a year and require that one loan is paid off before a second is approved. In Oregon, where 80 percent of voters said in a recent poll that they stood behind caps on interest rates, a bill is moving forward that would set interest rate limits at 36-percent per year for all loans less than $50,000. Gwen Curan with the Oregon AARP testified at a Oregon House Consumer Protection Committee hearing two weeks ago:

By Jesse Russell

Hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers have been waiting for nearly a decade for a minimum wage increase. 30 states have taken the issue into their own hands. Democrats in the U.S. House made a push earlier this year to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour, but Republicans in the Senate managed to block it and attach tax breaks for small business. The bill has now been attached to the already contentious emergency war spending bill that also calls for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. The Senate is scheduled to vote today.

New Mexico is set to become the most recent state to give a raise to minimum wage workers. Jesse Russell files this report:

By Jesse Russell

The state Senate passed the minimum wage bill on March 17 – a bill that will bump the state minimum from the federal level of $5.15 per hour to $7.50 per hour over two years. Once Governor Bill Richardson signs the bill there will be 30 states in the country with a wage higher then the federal minimum. Five states have no state minimum wage and Kansas has the lowest at $2.65 per hour. New Mexico is the second state to raise the minimum wage this year with Iowa passing a bill that raises the hourly rate of minimum wage workers to $7.25 per hour by January.

By Doug Cunningham

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research says 44 million , or 1 in 3 U.S. jobs, are low-paying jobs and most of them have no benefits. Margy Waller is with the center’s Mobility Agenda.

[Margy Waller 1]: "What we're seeing really is a hollowing out of the middle class. And we are seeing a decline in those jobs that people can move into."

Waller says rising productivity has not increased wages and these jobs, with wages below $11.11 an hour, need to be improved.

[Waller 2]: "We've got to turn the corner on this. To get back to where we were historically we've got to improve these jobs."

What’s wrong With Kansas? Plenty when it comes to the minimum wage. Jesse Russell has more.

The minimum wage in the state of Kansas is $2.65 per hour. That’s the lowest in the country. Kansas Republicans soundly defeated an attempt to raise the state minimum so that it would be equal to the federal minimum wage - $5.15 per hour. Roughly 19,000 workers in Kansas, in agricultural and certain service jobs are covered by the state minimum and not the federal. Every one of the 63 legislators who voted against raising the state minimum wage were Republican. Earlier in the day there was another bill that would have completely abolished the minimum. That bill narrowly failed in a 56-62 vote. Kansas is the only state in the union with a minimum lower than the federal minimum. And 28 other states have wages higher than the federal.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote today on whether to end debate and bring up a clean minimum wage increase bill for a vote without attaching tax break strings for business. Tax break bills for business never have automatic minimum wage hikes attached, but George W. Bush and some Republicans want to hold the minimum wage increase hostage to more tax breaks for business. Organized labor wants a “clean” minimum wage increase with no more tax breaks attached.

Twenty-Nine states were ahead of Congress and already have minimum wages that are higher than the federal one. And as Jesse Russell reports in Oregon it’s already higher than the new federal minimum will be.

One of the arguments against raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour on Wednesday was that states have been moving ahead and doing it on their own. Republican Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia argued that the move was a political ploy by the Democrats that ignored this fact:

[Kingston]: This is going to be good politics for them because most people won’t realize that since 1997, the last nine years that 29 states have increased the minimum wage and that is a fact that keeps getting overlooked.

Thanks to an overwhelming House vote, hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers in the United States have been scheduled for their first raise in nine years. Jesse Russell reports:

While there was plenty of opposition to raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour over a period of 26 months - most house members acknowledged that an increase was overdue. Republican Representative Zack Wamp of Tennessee said he would have preferred the wage bill to pass with two amendments - one for a repeal of the estate tax and a second that would offer associated health plans for small businesses. But he said due to the failures of corporate leadership in the United States the House needed to act:

Four years ago the state of Oregon set its minimum wage to increase each year along with the cost-of-living. Jesse Russell takes a look at the impact:

As the new year dawned Oregon’s minimum wage workers saw a .30 cent increase in their paychecks. In 2002 Oregonians approved a ballot measure that required the state’s minimum wage to keep pace with inflation - that automatically bumped it up to $7.80 this year. A report released this week by the Oregon Center for Public Policy suggests that opponents of the measure, who claimed nearly 30,000 jobs would be lost if the wage increase passed, have been proven wrong. The report finds that Oregon’s job growth is 11th fastest in the nation with restaurant jobs increasing by 13.5 percent. The Oregon Restaurant Association has been one of the loudest critics of the measure. The state has also bucked a national trend where agriculture jobs have dropped by 15 percent nationally over the past four years. Oregon has seen an increase of one percent. Report author Michael Leachman:

By Jesse Russell

President George W. Bush said he will back a raise of the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7. 25 per hour as long as it is coupled with tax relief for small business owners. Bush said he wants to make sure small business can “stay competitive.” Raising the minimum wage is a primary objective of the Democrats when they take control of the House and Senate in January.

By Jesse Russell

As the AFL-CIO says, With new management voted in on Tuesday, America's lowest paid workers may soon see their first raise in 10 years. One of future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's top initiatives is to break the log jam put in place by Republicans and raise the federal minimum wage from the current $5.15 per hour to possibly as high as $6.25 per hour. That rate is what Sen. Edward Kennedy had proposed earlier this year, but Republicans had refused to bring to a vote. Kennedy told reporters on Wednesday that party leaders had promised to bring his legislation to a vote – possibly as early as this month. The countries appetite for a higher wage is clear – based on the passing of minimum wage ballot measures in six states on Tuesday. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform now is working with the AFL-CIO to sponsor minimum wage campaigns in 103 cities next week.

Six states are looking at a possible increase in their minimum wage following today’s election - with the bigger prize potentially being a lift of the federal if Democrats take the House. Jesse Russell has more.

By Jesse Russell

Arizona. Colorado. Missouri. Montana. Nevada. Ohio. Those are the six states putting the question of raising their states minimum wage to voters today. All six states currently have wages equal to the federal minimum of $5.15 per hour - which has not increased in nearly 10 years. The highest wage increases would be in Ohio and Colorado - lifting the lowest paid in those states up to $6.85 per hour. Those six states will join 21 others that have a higher rate then the federal. While all of the wage bills are expected to pass - the big raise could happen if the Democrats gain a majority in the House of Representatives. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has vowed to break a republican log jam and lift the federal minimum to $7.25 per hour. While the Department of Commerce disagrees with such a move - most economists suggest it would have little negative impact on the economy.

By Doug Cunningham

Campaigns to raise state minimum wages are underway in seventeen states. Initiatives to raise the minimum wage are on ballots in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada and Montana. Labor organizers believe these initiatives will drive more Democratic voters to the polls. Rebekah Friend is President of the Arizona AFL-CIO.

[Rebekah Friend]: “We are talking to union members, we are working with community organizations that are out talking to communities. We are out in force. We expect to increase the voter turnout based on this issue."

Randy Kiser directs Labor 2006 in Missouri where a massive effort is underway by labor and allied groups to get out the vote and to win a minimum wage increase.

Five Nobel Prize winners and more than 600 economists have jointly called for the United States to raise the federal minimum wage. Jesse Russell reports:

By Jesse Russell

The value of the federal minimum wage has been fully eroded. That is the statement made Wednesday by more than 650 economists and five Nobel Prize winners in the field of economics. The federal minimum wage currently stands at $5.15 per hour and the economists write in their statement that an increase to $7.25 per hour “falls well within the range of options where the benefits to the labor market, workers, and the over all economy would be positive.” The economists added that the beneficiaries of such a raise are typically “adult, most are female, and the vast majority are of low-income working class families.” The federal minimum is currently worth less than it was more than 50 years ago.

On January First the minimum wage in California jumps to $7.50 per hour. In Santa Cruz members of the Working Alliance for a Just Economy don’t think that is enough - they are pushing for a $9.25 per hour minimum in the city. Vinny Lombardo has more:

By Vinnie Lombardo

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law, mid-September, to give California's
low wage workers a raise from $6.75/hr up to $7.50, beginning January
1. That figure jumps to $8.00 one year later, and will be the highest
state minimum wage in the US. Despite the bump in pay, government
figures show wages still not keeping pace with inflation. The proposed

Six states have minimum wage increases set for the November ballot. Jesse Russell reports that Arizona is looking at one of the bigger wage increases:

By Jesse Russell

If voters pass the Arizona wage increase on November 7, minimum wage workers in that state will see an increase from the federal minimum of $5.15 per hour to $6.75 per hour - a healthy raise of $1.60 per hour. For the average fulltime worker that would be more than $3300 in extra income each year. When adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum, which has not been increased in nine years, should be $6.54 per hour. Only eighteen states have a minimum wage higher then the federal. Five other states are also putting the issue to voters this year: Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.