Voters in Six States Approve Minimum Wage Increase

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/11/08/voters-in-six-states-approve-minimum-wage-increase/


Voters in Six States Approve Minimum Wage Increase

by James Parks, Nov 8, 2006

The pressure is on the next Congress to finally raise the minimum wage after voters yesterday overwhelmingly approved raising the minimum wage in all six states where it was on the ballot.

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio approved measures that raise state minimum wage levels by $1 to $1.70 an hour and indexed to inflation. Add to that the pledge by U.S. House Democrats that if they won control of the lower chamber, they would make raising the federal minimum wage—which has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for a decade—a priority and the momentum is building strongly for an increase.



priority and the momentum is building strongly for an increase.

Republican leaders in Congress succeeded in preventing an increase in the nation’s minimum wage for years, but the AFL-CIO and working families plan to keep pushing for a new law in the next Congress. Ten years after Congress approved the last raise, the federal minimum buys less than it did in 1951, accounting for inflation—fewer groceries, far fewer gallons of gasoline, less medicine and less for rent.

During the past year, the AFL-CIO union movement’s America Needs a Raise campaign has led the drive to raise the minimum wage on the state level through legislation or the ballot initiatives and through congressional action on the federal level. Thanks to that mobilization, today more than 80 percent of Americans believe that it’s time to give workers a raise and back the drive to boost the minimum wage.

FULL story at link above.

But it DID pass here in AZ! Yee-haw!!