CONCORD – The state's lowest-paid workers will get a 26 percent raise on Sept. 1 under a minimum wage increase Gov. John Lynch signed yesterday.
Under the first increase in a decade, minimum hourly pay will go from the current $5.15 to $6.50 on Sept. 1. It will increase again on Sept. 1, 2008 by 11 percent when it goes to $7.25.
Those who work for the lowest wages, two-thirds of them women, struggle to pay for gasoline, rent, childcare and groceries, Lynch said.
"The cost of all these things has increased significantly in the last 10 years, but New Hampshire's minimum wage has not increased," he said. The state is the last in New England to raise the lowest legal wage above the federal minimum wage. A University of New Hampshire study found that roughly 26,000 workers are paid minimum wage.
The bill also includes a provision that gives waitresses and others whose income depends on tips to be paid at 45 percent of the hourly minimum. Restaurant owners fought that part of the bill, saying it will push up their payroll costs and force job cuts or price hikes.
The bill, HB 514, had strong support from both parties in the House, where it passed 289-69, and the Senate, with a 19-5 vote.
The bill's prime sponsor, Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, said at the signing, "We're not suddenly going to make life 'Easy Street' for everybody in this state, but for those people who need just a little help to do a little more to be able to come closer to supporting their families - today is an important day."
Rep. Randolph "Rip" Holden, R-Goffstown, a co-sponsor of the bill, quoted late comic Jackie Gleason saying, "How sweet it is!" Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, said that many seniors as well as women work for the minimum, which amounts to $10,800 a year.
"What a difference this is going to make in their lives," she said. She noted the House has passed a minimum wage increase before, only to see it killed in the Senate.
Mark MacKenzie, president of the state AFL-CIO, said the increase, "is long overdue and much deserved, and I think it's an indication of the different group we now have in the House and Senate. We appreciate all they've done."
The UNH Office of Economic Initiatives and the North Country Council found that a livable wage for a single person here is $10.42 per hour. A livable wage for a family of four - with both parents working - would be $11.69 per hour for each parent.
Martha Yager of the American Friends Service Committee said she hopes the minimum wage hike is a step toward a livable wage. Citing the UNH study, she said, "we have a ways to go."
In addition to labor groups and the Women's Policy Institute, the wage bill had support from state Labor Commissioner George Copadis and the Catholic Diocese of Manchester.
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