Colorado Voters Get Chance to Raise the Minimum Wage

by Mike Hall, Aug 4, 2006

It looks like voters in Colorado will have the chance to raise the state’s minimum wage when they go to the polls this fall. Activists in the AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise campaign turned in more than 130,000 voter signatures to the Colorado secretary of state yesterday. It takes just 67,289 signatures to win a ballot spot. If passed, the initiative would boost the state minimum wage from $5.15 an hour—the current federal minimum wage—to $6.85.

Colorado joins five other states—Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Missouri and Ohio—where voters will have a chance at the polls in November to do what Republicans in Congress won’t: Raise the minimum wage. For 10 years, Republican lawmakers have blocked efforts (the latest vote taking place last night) to give the nation’s lowest-paid workers a raise. (On Tuesday, former Sen. John Edwards [D-.N.C.] will take part in a rally in Helena for Montana’s minimum wage ballot measure.)

After union members from the Colorado AFL-CIO, Coloradans for a Fair Minimum Wage, the community group ACORN and other groups collected the signatures, they marched to the state Capitol to submit them.

Says Bill Vandenberg of Coloradans for a Fair Minimum Wage:

We have grown tired of waiting for politicians to raise the minimum wage. We are going directly to the people.

The AFL-CIO’s America Needs a Raise campaign has been working in nearly two dozen states to raise the minimum wage either through legislation or ballot initiatives. Earlier this week, Massachusetts became the latest state to increase its minimum wage when the Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Last month, North Carolina and Pennsylvania joined the growing list of states to raise their minimum wages.

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