Activists, workers praise bill for $15 minimum wage – Baltimore City Paper
Raise the wage! Raise the wage!” city workers and advocates chanted on the steps of City Hall this afternoon.
They stood with Councilmember Mary Pat Clarke before she was set to introduce the first “Living Wage” bill in the country to tie hourly wages to inflation and other factors.
The bill, sponsored by eight other councilmembers, including Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, will increase the minimum wage to $15-an-hour by 2020. It also eliminates the subminimum wage of $3.63 for tipped workers and, perhaps the most significant part of the bill, ties the city’s minimum wage to inflation and the cost of housing, utilities, and goods and services as they increase.
Flanked by other council members, union workers, advocates, and clergy, Clarke acknowledged that her bill was being introduced a day before the anniversary Freddie Gray’s death and said the legislation was partly inspired by a “civic reawakening.” This entails bringing about justice by “closing the gap between the working poor and the living wage jobs… knitting together an otherwise financially divided society.”
If enacted, this bill will affect 80,000 people—about 20 percent of Baltimore City’s workforce.
After the press conference, Wiley Rhymer, an employee with Johns Hopkins and 1199 Union member, said that $11.99 an hour is not nearly enough to support him and the four children he raises alone.
“It’s not good at all,” he says. “I’m getting public assistance on what I’m making now. Raising the minimum wage would make a lot of difference.”
He says the days of economic roulette would be over. “I wouldn’t have to cut one bill so my children could do an activity. It would let them do an activity, plus put food on the table plus pay the gas and electric.”
A state wage increase was signed into law by former Gov. Martin O’Malley signed in April 2014, raising the state minimum wage in five stages over four years. The minimum wage will increase to $8.75-an-hour on July 1 of this year. By July 2018, it will increase to $10.10.
Benjamin Orr, the Executive Director of the Maryland Center on Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, said his organization supported the increased enacted under O’Malley but wanted to see more: “It was a necessary change for low-wage workers. However, it did not go far enough for many families, particularly here in Baltimore City.”
