March 8, 2005—The U.S. Senate failed to boost the federal minimum wage March 7, meaning the 2.5 million workers who make the $5.15 hourly federal minimum wage will not have seen a wage increase since 1997. An amendment offered by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to bankruptcy legislation (S. 256) would have raised the minimum wage by $2.10 over the next 26 months. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), about 7.3 million workers would have benefited from the wage hike to $7.25.
The measure, which needed 60 votes to win approval, lost 46–49, with four Republican senators backing it. Senate Republicans, seeking to deflect criticisms pointing to Republican lawmakers’ repeated efforts to block minimum wage increases, offered a poison pill amendment with a $1.10 hourly wage hike that also included devastating rollbacks in overtime and equal pay protections. That bill was defeated in a 38–61 vote.
“I believe that anyone who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year should not live in poverty in the richest country in the world,” said Kennedy, who vowed to offer the minimum wage amendment to other Senate bills later this year.
A full-time, year-round minimum wage worker in 2004 earned only $10,712, $4,493 less than the $15,205 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty.
“A substantial minimum wage increase is long overdue. It’s time Congress took meaningful action to increase the minimum wage and reject efforts by big business to deny workers fair wages and protections,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney prior to the vote.
Republicans Offer Sham Minimum Wage Bill
The Republicans’ minimum wage proposal was offered by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who Kennedy noted has voted against raising the minimum wage 17 times in the past decade. The amendment coupled the small wage increase with a provision to end the 40-hour workweek and replace it with an 80-hour, two-week work period. That would weaken overtime protection for workers who remain eligible for overtime pay after the Bush administration gutted the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime protections in 2004.
Santorum’s proposal also would have denied minimum wage, overtime and equal pay protections to as many as 10 million workers by doubling from $500,000 to $1 million the annual revenue level at which businesses are required to abide by the wage provisions of the FLSA. The Republican proposal also would have nullified state protections for workers who receive tips, allowing their employers to pay them as little as $2.13 per hour. Further, Santorum’s proposal also would have weakened safety and health protections by excusing reporting violations under certain circumstances, according to the EPI.
Sweeney called the Santorum amendment a “sham measure supported by big business that fails to address growing economic pressures facing working families. The Santorum amendment is an insult to workers who are struggling to balance household expenses and rising health care costs.”
With the minimum wage frozen since 1997, some states have increased the minimum wage above the federal mandatory minimum of $5.15 an hour and state legislation or ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage are active in Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. In addition, 15 states and the District of Columbia have set minimum wage rates above the federal floor.
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