[D]emocrats in the House have introduced a bill to raise Vermont’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022.
Dozens of them held an event Wednesday in the Statehouse calling on Gov. Phil Scott, who has made affordability one of the key issues of his administration, to raise the minimum wage to address the cost of living in Vermont.
Rebecca Kelley, Scott’s spokesperson, said: “He would like to see wages rise but believes this should be achieved through natural market forces. He’s supported indexing the minimum wage to inflation and believes we can lift wages by strengthening the economy and helping Vermonters keep more of what they earn.”
“We are in the midst of a four-year increase in the minimum wage, and we should let this policy run its course to let businesses absorb the costs and to assess the economic impact before moving forward on additional mandates,” she added.
The current minimum wage is $10 an hour and will increase to $10.50 in 2018. After that the minimum wage will rise with the consumer price index, which measures inflation.
The bill, offered by Rep. Curt McCormack, D-Burlington, would raise the wage faster, but incrementally — to $11.50 in 2019, $12.50 in 2020, $13.50 in 2021 and $15 in 2022.
“This move would give 85,000 Vermonters a raise,” said House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington. She cited support from two dozen advocacy organizations that represent workers, women, families and people with disabilities and are part of Vermont’s Raise the Wage Coalition.
“Raising wages for Vermonters enables them to better participate in our local economy, which will contribute to the health of Vermont’s small businesses,” Krowinski said. “It also helps in areas where people are struggling right now: with the cost of health care and housing.”
Rep. Chip Troiano, D-Stannard, said raising the minimum wage would encourage more young people to live in Vermont — a goal the governor has supported — without harming the economy.
He pointed to laws passed in Washington state, New York and California, where he said their economies and living standards “have shown improvement,” while at the same time “raising workers’ productivity and purchasing power.”
Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, said the majority of Vermont workers who make minimum wage are the primary breadwinners for their families and are more likely to be women than men.
“Nearly 45 percent of all Vermont women are earning under $15 an hour,” Morris said. “Of all Vermonters earning less than $12.50 an hour, 55 percent are women. For single mothers, this is devastating.”
Nicole Peck, a licensed nursing assistant at UVM Medical Center, said $15 an hour is a “family support wage” that would help her support her daughter. She and her colleagues are seeking to join a union and to be paid at least $15 an hour.
“I shouldn’t have to choose between eating healthy and buying her diapers,” Peck said through tears. She said she and her husband “half the time live off ramen noodles because we can’t afford to eat anything else.”
Dustin Tanner, who lives in Fairfield in Franklin County, said people in his community are working 60, 70, or 80 hours a week and can’t get by “because the wages are too low” and young people are leaving because they can’t live on the $10 minimum wage.
“I remember in high school I got three haircuts over the course of four years because my mom couldn’t afford to get me haircuts,” Tanner said, “which is something I can look at now and laugh at, but for thousands of kids in Vermont, it’s not a laughing matter.”
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, said she supports the concept of an increased minimum wage and doing it over a period of time. But she said more work needs to be done in committees to address how a raise would affect small businesses and farms.
Additionally, she said the Legislature needs to work to eliminate the so-called benefits cliff, in which workers are discouraged from taking promotions if it would eliminate all the help they get from government programs like food stamps.
