A proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in January squeaked through the House of Representatives by a single vote late Monday night.
The bill, L.D. 1375, sponsored by Rep. Benjamin Collings, D-Portland, was recommended by the Labor and House Committee in a party-line 8-3 vote. But six Democrats broke ranks and joined Republicans to oppose the bill in a roll call vote on the House floor shortly after 9:30 p.m.
Rep. Valli Geiger, D-Rockland, said she cosponsored the bill because she wanted to make it easier for young families to start a life in Maine. Geiger said Maine has a “perverse pride in being a low-wage state,” while struggling with high living costs, high rates of poverty and an aging workforce.
“The results of decades of low wages has come home to roost,” Geiger said.
Maine’s current minimum wage is $13.80, which Geiger said is below a livable wage, especially in southern Maine.
Geiger cited a Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimate that a livable wage for a single person with no children ranges from $14.28 an hour in Aroostook County to nearly $17.81 in Portland. Those wages increase to $30.33 and $30.67, respectively, for an adult with one child, she said.
Geiger said Maine’s welfare and public assistance programs are subsidizing low wages paid by Maine employers.
“It’s time to stop subsidizing employers and start requiring that a living wage be the floor from which we set wages in Maine,” she said. “This bill starts us in that direction. To avoid doing so is to see Maine become a true vacationland, with increasingly seasonal visitors while losing a year round workforce to other states.”
Republicans, however, argued that the minimum wage is a starting wage for young workers and increasing it would do little to attract young people or keep them here and would only hurt small business owners.
“Minimum wage was never designed to support a family,” Rep. Mark Blier, R-Buxton said. “Nobody’s moving from Florida to come to Maine to earn minimum wage.”
Blier said that increasing the minimum wage would only increase consumer prices, which would negate any financial gains.
“Raising the minimum wage will never stop poverty, it just increases inflation,” he said.
The bill, which would continue indexing the minimum wage to inflation, faces additional votes in Senate and the House.
This story will be updated.
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