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Portland, Maine, voters also approved a gradual increase to $15 by 2024, with tipped workers to be paid half the non-tipped minimum wage. The local Chamber of Commerce is suing to block a provision that would create an emergency minimum wage of time-and-a-half—since the city’s current minimum wage is $12, that would raise it to $18 during the coronavirus pandemic emergency.
The minimum wage went up in many states due to previously scheduled increases: Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, South Dakota, and Vermont had automatic cost of living increases, while Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Washington had step increases as they work their way up after earlier legislation or ballot initiatives. Those increases will in most cases be repeated in 2021.
This year did not see as many new minimum wage increases as in recent years. For one thing, 29 states and the District of Columbia now have minimum wages above the federal rate—the low-hanging fruit was picked a while ago, and frankly some of the not-so-low-hanging fruit as well. Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic was doubtless an impediment to ground organizing for ballot measures in many states and cities—though the Portland emergency pay provision shows a really good response that more cities should have adopted.
If Republicans continue to control the Senate in 2021, Mitch McConnell is going to continue to stand in the way of a minimum wage increase, though Democrats will have substantially more leverage than they’ve had through the past four years to really hammer home that this is a historic blockade on progress for working people and that it rests solely on one party. Raising the federal minimum wage can be and must be part of an economic recovery from the pandemic that extends past the wealthy to working people.
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