On June 25, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing, “Building a Foundation of Fairness: 75 Years of the Federal Minimum Wage.” Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ranking Member Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and other members of the committee heard testimony regarding the possibility of increasing the federal minimum wage.
Sen. Alexander said, “As a governor, when it came to a state that had the third-lowest family incomes in America, I looked around at how I could help improve incomes in our state, and the last thing in my mind was to say that what I ought to do is pass a law in Tennessee that says everybody ought to be paid more. Because I knew from experience that companies had to make the money to pay that. And companies wouldn’t come and couldn’t grow in Tennessee if that were the requirement. So we set about in another direction and that was to create an environment in which they could succeed. That meant, for example, getting rid of the usury limit we had in the state at the time, which kept capital from coming in. It meant maintaining and defending a right-to-work law, which gave employees freedom to choose and created an opportunity for the American automobile industry to come to Tennessee and compete in this marketplace. And so suddenly we went from a situation where we had no auto jobs to one where a third of our manufacturing jobs are auto jobs.”
Hilary O. Shelton, director, NAACP Washington Bureau, and senior vice president for Advocacy and Policy, said, “Among those who would particularly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage are women of color. In 2012, more than seven percent of African American women and eight percent of Hispanic women worked in jobs that paid at or below the federal minimum wage, such as home health aides, maids and housekeepers, and servers, compared to less than four percent of white men. Given that more women of color are the primary breadwinners for their families than their Caucasian counterparts, the end result is the perpetuation of poverty among families of color. According to the 2011 Census data, African American women are the heads of their households almost 29 percent of the time, compared to White women, who are the heads of their households less than nine percent of the time. An increase in the minimum wage has a tremendous impact on children as well, given that the majority of African American children nationwide – 54 percent – are being raised by single mothers.”
The following witnesses also testified:
