Senate Bill 1186, a product of the Pennsylvania Senate, could raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $20 an hour as early as July 1, if passed.
The state’s minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since 2006 when it was increased to comply with the federal minimum. A $20 minimum hourly wage would be the highest in the nation.
The bill highlights the need to provide cost of living-adjusted increases and would also set the tipped wage to 70% of the minimum wage.
“Tellingly, $7.24/hr is the very definition of a poverty-level wage for a childless adult under the Department of Health and Human Services’ Poverty Guidelines and is even further below the threshold when factoring in children,” Senator Christine Tartaglione, who represents Philadelphia, said in her memo. “Keeping people in poverty is not how we move the Commonwealth forward – our current wage is immoral and unjustifiable.”
According to the memo, the legislation would also enforce the following:
- Allowing municipalities to set a local minimum wage greater than the state minimum wage;
- Guarding against wage theft by ensuring that the Department of Labor & Industry may recover wages and penalties for all violations of the act, not only when a complaint is filed
- Increasing monetary penalties for violations, which in some cases have not been updated since 1968
- Bringing enforcement in line with the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act by allowing workers to receive damages in addition to unpaid wages
- Enshrining in law that gratuities are the sole property of the employee
Other legislators, including Governor Josh Shapiro, are vying for a $15/hr minimum, but Tartaglione said that rate “is no longer adequate.”
“Our minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years – and in that time, every single one of our neighboring states has raised their minimum wage. Pennsylvania is losing out. Let’s raise the wage to $15 an hour,” Shapiro said.
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Pennsylvania’s Senate seemed to agree to raise the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 in 2019, but the effort failed after being blocked by Republicans.
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