Notice: Colorado’s minimum wage becomes 1st in US to drop!
By Daniel at 3 January, 2010, 2:00 am
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ENVER – Colorado’s minimum wage will drop slightly in the new year — the first decrease in any state’s minimum wage since the federal minimum was adopted in 1938.
Colorado’s wage is falling 3 cents an hour, from $7.28 to the federal level of $7.25. That’s because Colorado is one of 10 states that tie the state minimum wage to inflation. The goal is to protect low-wage workers from having unchanged paychecks as the cost of living goes up.
But Colorado’s provision also allows wage declines, and the state’s consumer price index fell 0.6 percent last year, so the minimum wage is going down.
The lower consumer price index, attributed to lower fuel prices, would have forced the wage down 4 cents an hour, But no state can go below the federal minimum of $7.25.
Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia will keep a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Alaska will join them Friday when its minimum wage rises 50 cents to $7.75.
Colorado’s drop is small — but those among the estimated 48,000 residents earning the minimum shook their heads at the possibility of pay cut.
“It is hard to make it, hard to get by,” said John Mullen, 50, an out-of-work construction worker waiting for a bus on a bitterly cold New Year’s Eve in Denver. Mullen said he remembers making minimum wage at a factory and having enough for small comforts.
“You’d get paid every Friday, have enough money to go catch a poker game or take your girl out to a dinner,” Mullen said. “But the law is the law. What can you do?”
Others said that even a tiny drop for the lowest-paid workers will be felt.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091231/ap_on_bi_ge/us_minimum_wage_drop
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This would be news if the author actually came up with someone who works 40 hrs a week at minimum wage. She interviews 3 people (one who employs 14 more people) and finds no one who is working for minimum wage at all. Not to mention never finding someone who works 40 hrs a week at the minimum.