by Mike Hall, Jun 23, 2006

Fed up with years-long congressional Republican and Bush White House roadblocks to raising the federal minimum wage, working families and their unions are stepping up their efforts to win pay increases on the state level.

This just in….We learned this afternoon from the Montana State AFL-CIO that the Raise Montana coalition today in Helena announced coalition volunteers have gathered the more than 22,000 signatures needed to place a $1-an-hour minimum wage hike—to $6.15 an hour—on the November ballot. The measure also would index the wage to inflation.

The AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise campaign is spearheading state legislative actions and ballot initiatives to boost state minimum wages above the $5.15-an-hour federal level where it has been frozen since 1997. Republicans in Congress refuse to raise it. Grassroots activists won victories this week in Pennsylvania and Delaware, while in Massachusetts, lawmakers ducked a vote on a minimum wage increase. yIn Delaware, the state Senate on June 21 gave its final approval to raise the state’s minimum wage from its current $6.15 an hour to $7.15 an hour in two 50-cent steps by January 2008. The bill passed the House earlier this month and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) is expected to sign it.

The Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill to boost the minimum wage by $2 an hour from its current $5.15 an hour. But the Republican-controlled Senate included exemptions that were not in a House-passed bill and that will slow the increase for some workers.

Pennsylvania state Senate Democrats say the bill also could give employers an incentive to fire or reclassify current full-time workers as part-timers to qualify for an exemption that applies to employers with 10 or fewer full-time workers.

“We’re playing an incredible shell game on Pennsylvania’s working poor,” says state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D).

In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives backed off an expected vote June 22 on raising the state’s minimum wage by $1 an hour to $7.75, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO is urging lawmakers to act on the legislation after they return next week.

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO state federation issued its endorsements for the 2006 fall elections June 22, but is withholding:

the release of endorsements of all incumbent legislators seeking re-election until the Massachusetts State Legislature has successfully passed to completion an acceptable minimum wage bill.

The Massachusetts state Senate earlier passed a bill boosting the wage by $1.50, indexing it to inflation so its value does not erode. The House resumes work next week.

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