Fifteen Years In A Row PA’s Minimum Wage Has Not Budged Past $7.25/hr
by Alex Lloyd Gross
According to Pennsylvania State Senator Art Haywood, the senate republicans should be ashamed of themselves. The minimum wage has not been raised one cent. Meantime, the pay for house lawmakers has risen every year, do to the cost of living raises they voted for themselves. It’s now close to $100 thousand .
In 2020 the country shut down due to the pandemic. Low wage workers were suddenly called “essential workers”. The country would shut down if if was not for people unloading trucks, running cash registers, cleaning trash and pumping gas.
A photo of a $100,000 bill. A worker getting paid $7.25/hr does not make close to this if they work 100 hours a week. That is factoring in overtime.By comparison, a state lawmaker gets this and more every year.
Now that the pandemic is over, those people that work those jobs are forgotten. The minimum wage is going to go to $15.42/hr is New Jersey. In Delaware , New York and every state that borders Pennsylvania, it is going to go up. According to Haywood, the fault on that lays squarely on the shoulders of senate republicans.
The cost of living has gone up every year. One just has to look at the cost of food. Haywood says those employers that pay workers even $10.00/hr are legislating their workers into poverty.
When the wage goes up, taxpayers reap the benefits. Workers making more do not qualify for government benefits like food stamps, or health insurance. Money saved can go to pay for infrastructure. Ill informed people would think that with all of the talk about $15.00 , employers will pay their workers more. That’s not always true. Just look at striking food service workers making $14.11hr. at the sports complex, while Aramark soaks fans for upwards of $6.00 for a soda that costs them pennies.
Alex Lloyd Gross file photo -Delaware Valley News.com. Senator Art Haywood leads a rally to raise the minimum wage in north Philadelphia.
When workers went on strike, Aramark hired temp workers at over $21.00/hr and they sat in the stadium on standby doing nothing , they pay $14.11 because they can. There are plenty of businesses that exploit workers for $7.25 hr in the state. Governor Josh Shapiro said repeatedly that he will sign the wage bill into law. Lawmakers that say mostly everyone pays more anyway so the minimum wage s a dead issue should have no problem raising it to what they feel is already the standard.