by Mike Hall, Aug 17, 2006

In Colorado, it’s now official: The ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $6.85 an hour will go before the voters this November. The secretary of state yesterday certified the signatures delivered Aug. 3 by union and community activists.
 
In another boost for low-wage workers today, state legislators at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) turned back an attempt to rescind the group’s support of federal legislation to boost the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.
 
Says Colorado AFL-CIO Political Director Carolyn Siegel:

The coalition behind the minimum wage campaign continues to grow, and the Colorado AFL-CIO looks forward to our continued work with ACORN, the Colorado Progressive Coalition, 9to5 and the growing number of organizations and individuals who are part of making sure that we see a minimum wage increase for the state. People did a great job on the signature gathering and we look forward to moving towards the election.

At the NCSL annual meeting in Nashville, a resolution in support of a federal minimum wage increase was reaffirmed by hundreds of state legislators.

Trish Welte of the AFL-CIO Politics and Field Department reports that a motion was made by Georgia State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh (R) to reverse the minimum wage policy, but was met with a loud and resounding chorus of “boos” from his colleagues and received no support from any additional states. State legislators, including members of the National Labor Caucus of State Legislators, sported AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise stickers and handed out fliers during the week-long conference.

The NCSL minimum wage resolution, passed in April, also opposes attempts to slash the wages of millions of workers who earn tips—a poison-pill provision included by congressional Republicans in the most recent legislation to increase the federal minimum wage. The bill was defeated Aug. 3 in the Senate.
 
Activists in nearly two dozen states have mobilized through the America Needs a Raise campaign in support of federal and state legislation and state ballot measures to increase the minimum wage. The federal minimum has been frozen at $5.15 an hour for a decade, and most states have not raised their minimum wages any higher.
 
Over the years, Republicans have pulled out all the stops to kill bills that would boost the wage. Along with maneuvers to keep wage legislation from floor votes, they recently linked the minimum wage to massive estate tax cuts for millionaires, business tax cuts, changes in labor law that would gut overtime pay protection and the 40-hour workweek and other poison pills.
 
While members of Congress have not raised the minimum wage in 10 years, they raised their own pay nine times in the same period—by $35,000.

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