Senate panel votes down minimum wage increase [View all]
A Senate panel Thursday tabled legislation that would gradually increase Montana’s minimum wage to $12 an hour, likely spelling an end to efforts to increase the wage this session.
Lawmakers on the Senate Business, Labor and Economic affairs voted down a motion to send the bill to the floor, 5-6, with the committee’s chair, Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, raising concerns that increasing the minimum wage could have an adverse effect on employment.
Senate Bill 187, proposed by Philipsburg Democratic Sen. Mark Sweeney, would increase the state’s minimum hourly wage to $10 in 2022, adding a dollar each year until 2024. Montana’s current minimum wage is $8.75 an hour.
Sweeney has marketed the bill as an incremental approach to bettering the lives of low-wage workers in the state without expanding government programs. The buying power of the minimum wage has eroded during the years, and a gulf has widened between Montana’s minimum hourly wage and its median hourly wage. At the same time, the number of minimum wage hours worked by adults as opposed to teenagers in their first jobs — the demographic that opponents of wage increases often cite — has increased.
Read more: https://dailymontanan.com/briefs/senate-panel-votes-down-minimum-wage-increase/
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