Minimum Wage Up, Still Insufficient (7/24/08)

The federal minimum wage rises today to $6.55 an hour, the second step of a three step process that will raise the standard to $7.25 a year from now.

However, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) even with this increase, years of minimum wage stagnation means that low income workers will see little improvement in their standard of living. Luckily, 11 states and the District of Columbia, have enacted minimum wage laws of their own that guarantee better than what the federal government is now requiring.
 
"At the new federal level, a full-time, minimum-wage worker earns below the poverty line for a household of two," said the EPI's Mary Gable. 
 
"For an entire decade, the Republican-led Congress fought minimum wage increases every step of the way, said RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum.
 "The result is that minimum wage workers have less buying power today than their counterparts had in the 1950s," he added.

"The fact of the matter is that the best strategy to raise workers' wages is unionization -- and that will become a lot easier after Barack Obama becomes president and signs the Employee Free Choice Act," Appelbaum said.