A Living Wage

A move to raise the minimum wage from $3.35 an hour to $4.65 an hour is gaining momentum in Congress. That a vote could come in the Senate as early as next week is encouraging news for the working poor. Despite repeated efforts by Democrats, employees earning the legal minimum--except for those in California and six other states--have worked at the same low wages for eight years. A decent pay raise is long overdue.

At least one major stumbling block has been removed. President Bush--unlike his predecessor--is willing to support an increase to $4.25 an hour, the present rate in California. That meager increase would be better than none, but it would not even make up for the 30% loss in buying power that inflation has imposed on minimum-wage earners since 1981.

To make any raise more palatable to business, which traditionally opposes any increase at all on the unproven ground that it causes unemployment, Bush also supports a lower “training” wage of $3.35 an hour for six months for new workers. A sub-minimum wage is a troubling notion, because the lower rate could encourage employers to replace adults with younger and cheaper labor.

Senate Democrats have rejected Bush’s new minimum wage in favor of a sounder proposal by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would raise the minimum wage to $4.65 an hour. The higher rate would be just enough to make up for inflation. It would go up in stages--40 cents when the bill becomes law, an additional 40 cents next Jan. 1 and another 50 cents on the first day of 1991. The gradual increase would give employers time to prepare for the higher rate.

The Democrats say they will drop their opposition to a sub-minimum wage if it includes an educational component and lasts only for the time it takes to train a new worker--often as little as a month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That seems fair.

While the Senate is expected to take up Kennedy’s bill sometime next week, an identical proposal will go before the House Education and Labor Committee Tuesday.

Five million Americans earn the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. At least 1 million of them are heads of impoverished households. Their paychecks stay the same--$134 a week--no matter how high prices rise and no matter how well they perform their jobs. They earn slightly less than $6,900 a year, which is below the poverty line for all families except a single parent and two children.

Congress and a compassionate President ought to do better by Americans who are willing to work hard for the nation’s lowest wage.