For 2023, workers in upstate New York will benefit from the state minimum wage increasing from $13.20 per hour to $14.20 per hour. (In the larger counties of Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, the state minimum wage is already $15.)
Some Chautauqua County leaders are expressing serious reservations about this 7.6% increase, while celebrating that Chautauqua County seniors will receive an even larger 8.7% increase in Social Security benefits in 2023.
These same leaders seem to remain silent in the face of a federal minimum wage of just $7.25 that Congress has refused to raise since 2009. Adjusted for inflation, that $7.25 in 2009 should be at least minus $10 nationwide now. (A future essay will analyze how the wealthiest Americans, by contrast, have benefited from the federal government’s fiscal policy since 2009.)
As someone who believes in work over welfare, as a drug court judge who urged drug court participants to get jobs as part of graduation of drug court, and as someone who agrees with Martin Luther’s view 500 years ago that all honest work is a calling and all callings are pleasing to God, someone in the 21st century America who works full time shouldn’t live in poverty. At $7.25 an hour, a full-time worker in a state like Mississippi earns less than $15,000 a year. Ashamed.
It’s hard to hear a state legislator earning $110,000 a year with great perks and perks for part-time work object to his constituents working full-time at New York’s minimum wage getting a $2,000 increase from $26,400 to $28,400.
Chautauqua County residents have unfortunately become relatively poorer in recent years compared to the average New Yorker and average American. We should celebrate the fact that raising the minimum wage in New York will uplift many workers in Chautauqua County.
Some say raising the minimum wage to $14.20, on its way to $15, is too much.
I agree that the demand by some over the past 10 years for a $15 minimum wage in America was an arbitrary figure. Why not $14? Why not $13? Why not $12.50?
I agree that even though the minimum wage benefit increases for the vast majority of workers, some jobs are lost. However, the demand for a $15 minimum wage unfortunately did not lead to a reasonable compromise in Congress to raise the federal minimum wage.
In the absence of action in Washington, 30 states have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25
Major American corporations have created their own national minimum wage.
On September 25, 2021, Walmart increased its starting minimum wage for approximately 565,000 workers nationwide from $11 to $12 per hour. In some states, the starting wage will be $17 per hour. The company’s average wage rose to $16.40 an hour.
At the same time, Sam’s Club at Walmart raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Sadly, Chautauqua County lost its only Sam’s Club and 130 high-paying jobs a few years ago.
Target, which is currently renovating the former K-Mart store in West Ellicott into the first Target location in Chautauqua County, hit a minimum wage of $15 an hour two years ago. On February 28, 2022, Target announced a new starting wage rate of $15 to $24 per hour, depending on local conditions. Target has approximately 400,000 employees nationwide.
Disagreement in America over the minimum wage has been going on for 90 years.
In 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, there was no federal minimum wage. There was no Social Security for Americans 65 and older and no unemployment insurance.
Although Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, it took until 1938 after FDR’s landslide re-election in 1936 and a change in attitude by the United States Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the federal government protecting workers, to that Congress pass the Fair Labor Standards Act which established our nation’s first minimum wage. Ninety-seven members of the House voted against the law.
New York political and business leaders who are concerned that New York’s high minimum wage will hurt the competitiveness of New York businesses should join the effort to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to a minimum of $12, or even $15. (The 1970 federal minimum wage under President Nixon would now be $12 in inflation-adjusted dollars.)
It’s time to care more about the working poor in America, even if they can’t afford to attend political fundraisers at $1,000 a plate (or even $100).
Fred Larson is a 1973 graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, served as Chautauqua County legislator from 1985 to 1993 and in 2014; and a Jamestown City Court judge who retired in 2021.
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