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Senate panel OK's minimum wage hike after last-minute 'handshake' deal Tuesday, Apr 4, 2006 By Wesley Brown Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A Senate committee unanimously backed legislation Monday to raise the state's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 an hour after a last-minute hallway deal was hammered out regarding employees who receive tips as part of their wages. "I want you to remember that the last time the minimum wage was raised was in 1997," Alan Hughes, president of the state AFL-CIO, told the Senate's Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee on the first day of the 85th General Assembly's First Extraordinary Session. "There is no reason that someone should go that long without a raise." After Hughes' plea, Senate Bill 11 by Sen. Jack Critcher, D-Batesville, was endorsed on a voice vote. The bill, as amended, will now go to the full Senate, and must also be approved by the House and signed by the governor before taking effect. Hughes is part of a coalition that supported a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage before agreeing instead to support SB 11. His group, Give Arkansas A Raise Now, altered its position slightly Monday by siding with representatives of the business community to change a provision in Critcher's bill. The change would lower the allowance for gratuities as a part of the hourly wage rate from 50 percent to 42 percent. That compromise, brokered outside the Senate hearing by Rep. Benny Petrus, D-Stuttgart, the House-speaker designate for the 2007 session, would in effect raise current minimum tip wage from $2.13 to $2.63 per hour. During a 10-minute break in the standing-room only Senate hearing, Petrus brought the last-minute deal before the committee so that Critcher could insert the compromise language. "I think it is much more responsible to do this legislatively rather than placing it in the Constitution," said Critcher, who will be president pro tempore of the Senate in 2007. "It is something we should have done a few years ago." Yet opponents of the minimum wage hike that were not a part of the original or last-minute negotiations to approve SB 11 said the Legislature did not consider the "economic consequences" of the legislation. "We have long said this is a federal issue and should not be decided state by state," said Montine McNulty, executive director of the Arkansas Hospitality Association. "It is wrong philosophically, economically and strategically." Bill Vickery, spokesman for a loosely organized group called Arkansans Fighting to Save Our Jobs, said many Arkansans of "mom-and-pop" business owners are not even aware of the current movement to raise the minimum wage. "They don't have a daily (meeting) at the state Capitol, so they become aware of these things only at the last minute," Vickery said. "For the sake of expediency, and with no clear logic behind it, we are passing a bill that ultimately is like a frying pan in the face for a lot of these small mom and pop businesses." Vickery said that he believes a lot of small business owners will be outraged when they learn this new legislation will go into effect on Oct. 1. "By then it will be too late," he said. The Arkansas Chamber of Commerce, the state's largest business lobby, did not actively support or lobby against the bill. However, as supporters were congratulating each other following the Senate hearing, chamber spokesman Kenny Hall said the lobbying team for the chamber did "monitor" the monthlong negotiations among lawmakers, business owners and supporters of the minimum wage hike. "This is something that we can live with," Hall said of the compromise pact. Earlier in the day, during his address to open the special session, Gov. Mike Huckabee asked lawmakers to support the minimum wage hike because it would help workers "at the bottom end of the wage scale." Later, Huckabee walked the halls of the state Capitol to lobby for Critcher's bill and other legislation that will come up during the special session. |
