U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings wants a referendum on the ballot next year to increase Florida's minimum wage to $12.50 an hour.
Hastings,
a Democrat who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties,
said the 55 percent increase from the current $8.05 an hour, is a
"starting point." He said he'd prefer $15 an hour, but wouldn't ask for
that much because opponents would "go bonkers."
Read more:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-minimum-wage-increase-hastings-20150215-story.html#page=1
Being lost in all of the increase the Minimum Wage proposals is the fact that whether it is $8.50, $10.10, $12.50 or $15.00 an hour, the only way the Minimum Wage will ever be anything other than a poverty wages providing employers with cheap labor is if the Minimum Wage is legislatively tied to the actual and real "cost-of-living" factors as monitored by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics and then linked to inflation.
Here in Minnesota, the Democratic Governor, Mark Dayton, who promised to make the Minimum Wage a living non-poverty wage in order to get elected, ended up giving his cabinet heads raises that were more than what most workers make in a year while legislating one more poverty Minimum Wage for workers.
Here is the kicker: Dayton and Minnesota Democrats claim they are looking out for tax-payers but giving his cabinet members these huge raises is a burden on tax-payers while raising the Minimum Wage to a real living non-poverty wage wouldn't have cost tax-payers one single penny.
While no one is dumb enough to turn down a raise of any amount, this struggle for a just Minimum Wage needs to get centered on wages and cost-of-living not just "raising the Minimum Wage" which lets these politicians, most of whom are multi-millionaires, off the hook.