Democrat Shift Fends Off GOP on Training Pay

Senate Democrats offered today to expand slightly an existing sub-minimum wage for full-time students to head off what they called a “hire ‘em and fire ‘em” 90-day training wage backed by Republicans.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), on his bill raising the minimum wage from its current $3.35 an hour to $4.55 an hour by 1991, offered an amendment that would allow employers to hire up to 12 students instead of the six now allowed for up to 20 hours a week at 85% of the minimum wage.

Only about 100,000 students are now earning the $2.85 sub-minimum wage, according to Labor Department officials, compared with 515,000 students in 1978. Kennedy said his proposal would allow employers to double the number of students at the sub-minimum wage on their payrolls.

Blocks Hatch Amendment

The tactic was aimed at heading off a Republican amendment by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah to establish an 80% training wage for newly hired workers for up to 90 days.

Hatch indicated that Republicans were unwilling to vote today on Kennedy’s student wage, putting off the key Republican-Democratic showdown on the politically volatile minimum-wage issue until next week, eight weeks before the November election.

Kennedy complained that none of the Republican training-wage proposals require employers to provide any training. He said their real purpose was to give employers a “windfall” lower wage in jobs that have turnover rates of up to 400% a year.

“Who honestly believes that it takes three months for someone to learn to mop a floor or change the sheets on a bed?” Kennedy said. “This is a pure and simple wage cut.”

He said the Republican proposal would provide employers with a powerful incentive to “throw working families out on the street once every 90 days” and replace them with a new force of trainees.

“This is the hire ‘em and fire ‘em wage, maybe we can call it the churn ‘em and burn ‘em wage,” Kennedy said.