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Minimum Wage: Time for a Change? Yes
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12943 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1987 |
3,969 Words |
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Rogan Kersh
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Seven times in the past half-century Congress has acted to raise the minimum wage. The last hike, which took effect on January 1, 1981, set the floor at $3.35 an hour, as required by legislation passed in 1977. The 100th Congress has renewed deliberation on the issue, and individuals and groups of widely ranging opinions are already converging on what is expected to be a protracted debate.
The minimum wage has long been a controversial topic, in part because it appears readily comprehensible (especially when compared to most economic issues) and also because it directly affects the pocketbooks of millions of workers, businesses, and consumers.
The basic concept underlying a national minimum wage is deceptively simple. Workers must be paid at or above a specified rate, thus assuring those at the low end of the pay scale at least subsistence-level salaries and forcing would-be exploitative employers to pay better than they otherwise might. The minimum figure is not intended to represent an average wage, even for unskilled labor, but rather a "safety net" for the poorest workers. The average manufacturing wage, indeed, normally is around twice the minimum, and often the impetus for new hikes in the minimum wage comes from a significant widening of the gap between the two.
Reducing poverty has proved an elusive aim almost everywhere it is pursued, and the actual effects of the wage remain far more complex than the underlying logic suggests. Minimum wage disputes are contentious enough that the issue is refought every five years or so, and in 1987 it has surfaced once again.
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, in a news conference at the labor organization's winter conference, mentioned $4.61 as an "exact number" compensating for price rises since the 1981 hike in the minimum. Kirkland's comments were echoed by House and Senate majority leaders James Wright and Robert Byrd. House and Senate Democratic leaders on March 25 launched a drive to rise the minimum wage in stages to $4.65 by 1990. Given an administration consistently opposed to higher minimum wage levels, the battle lines seem clearly drawn.
In considering the various claims put forth by proponents and opponents of a higher minimum wage, it is useful to briefly review the history of the issue, particularly since the same arguments turn up repeatedly in only slightly altered form. In the United States, minimum wage legislation was first enacted in 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which established a 25-cent hourly minimum along with the 40-hour workweek and regulation of child labor. However, the wage debate actually surfaced more than a quarter-century earlier, when FDR's distant cousin Theodore included in the Progressive Party platform a plank advocating minimum wage laws covering women and children. By 1923, 16 states had established floors of varying levels, then a Supreme Court ruling overturned these laws and low-wage issues languished for several years. Depression-era values revived concern, however, and the FLSA's provisions became the national standard.
The United States was not alone in moving slowly to address the minimum wage. The Industrial Revolution was old news by the time most Western countries enacted policies affecting wage floors and the like. A bitter coal strike in 1893 forced the question
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