Some of Maine’s hardest workers didn’t deserve a 10 percent pay cut. But that’s just what they’ve gotten while the nation has failed to increase the minimum wage.
If Maine’s minimum wage had kept pace with inflation after it moved to $7.50 an hour in 2009, it would be about $8.25 today. Going back in time, the $7.50 has the buying power of only about $6.75 in 2009 dollars. That’s a loss of $30 a week for a low-income family, or $1,560 a year. The missing buying power could represent a used car that wasn’t purchased, a house that wasn’t heated properly or a table without enough healthy food on it.
Our tolerance for letting the minimum wage be eaten away by inflation is a national disgrace, and it is a problem that would best be dealt with on a national level.
We were encouraged last year when Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King worked to find a compromise to raise the federal minimum wage from its inadequate $7.25 an hour.
But this important job does not appear to be on Washington’s agenda right now, leaving the matter up to the cities and states. This year, 20 states have raised their minimum wage – nine with automatic cost-of-living increases and 11 as a result of legislative action or referendum. Maine should join this group.
There are several bills before the Legislature this year that would address this wage stagnation. We think the right place to start is L.D. 843, filed by Rep. Gina Melaragno, D-Auburn, which would increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour over the next four years and then link it to inflation after that.
Lobbyists for the small-business community have howled, and there have been dire predictions that the added wage responsibility would result in a loss of jobs, but that has not been the experience in states that have raised their minimum wages. Last year, job growth in those states outpaced job growth in the nation as a whole.
The reason is simple: Workers with more cash in their pockets will spend it. Economic activity creates more jobs. It’s a virtuous cycle that has been proven to work repeatedly throughout history.
There are ways for the state to help small businesses, ways that don’t require keeping full-time workers mired in poverty.
Increasing the minimum wage would give a raise not just to the 20,000 Mainers at the bottom of the pay scale, but also to the workers whose current pay is more than $7.50 but less than the new minimum. And employers who already pay good workers $12 or more an hour would have to consider giving them raises or risk losing them.
The Economic Policy Institute gives us a picture of who would be helped by this law: L.D. 843 would give 120,000 people a raise. More than 80 percent of the affected workers are over the age of 20. Sixty percent are women. More than 60,000 children would have at least one parent who would get a raise.
If lawmakers have any question about the support for such a bill, they should send it to referendum. Raising the minimum wage is regularly supported in polls by at least 2 to 1.
Every year we wait, the paychecks grow more meager. Doing nothing takes more from those who can least afford it.
Maine lawmakers should do the right thing and raise the minimum wage.