States Vote For Minimum Wage Hike, But Is It Enough?
States Vote For Minimum Wage Hike, But Is It Enough?
Erik Sherman 11/05/2014 @ 7:42AM
If there was upsets and contention in much of midterm voting, there was one topic on which the electorate was largely united: raising the minimum wage. Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all had ballot measures on raising state minimum wages above both their current levels and the federal $7.25 an hour figure.
All four states passed the measures, most by significant margins. More than two-thirds of voters in Alaska agreed to raise minimum wage to $9.75 by 2016. Sixty-five percent of Arkansas voters set the state on course to adopt an $8.50 figure by 2017. In Nebraska, 59 percent said the number should be $9 an hour by 2016. Only South Dakota stood out with a slimmer margin; 53 percent voted to raise minimum wage to $8.50 an hour next year. In Alaska and South Dakota, minimum wage is now pegged to inflation, meaning that it will rise as the cost of living does.
Those weren’t the only votes on the topic. San Francisco, one of the most expensive American cities to live in, increased its local minimum wage to $15 an hour. In Illinois, 62 percent voted for a non-binding referendum to increase minimum wage to $10 an hour by next year. On a related topic, Massachusetts voters passed mandatory paid sick leave. California and Connecticut were the first two states to require the benefit...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2014/11/05/states-vote-for-minimum-wage-hike-but-is-it-enough/
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