The Democratic senators - who number 17 compared to 33 Republicans in the Senate - reiterated their support for House Bill 1027, the minimum wage increase bill, which faces a deadline this week to get voted out of committee. "In terms of the status of the bill, we are encouraged and concerned by the status," said Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson.
Indiana's minimum wage currently is the same as the federal minimum, $5.15 an hour, and hasn't been adjusted in 10 years. House Bill 1027 would increase it in three stages: to $6 in September, to $6.75 in March and to $7.50 in September 2008. The bill got a hearing last week in the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee. Senators on the committee could add amendments and vote on it Wednesday.
"We are concerned because we understand there could be some changes to the bill as it is now," Lanane said during a Monday news conference with Democratic senators. "We believe any changes in the bill should not be ones that would significantly lower that ultimate wage in the state of Indiana."
A Republican senator on the Pensions and Labor committee, Sen. Mike Young of Indianapolis, isn't sure how he will vote until he sees the amendments. He is concerned about the impact of mandating a wage increase on businesses, however.
"The only thing it does do is, when you raise that lower tier, it forces businesses either not to hire more or to lay off so they can keep raising the next tier," Young said. "Because what you don't want is having an entry-level person making the same as a person who's been there a year or two. So that forces an escalation or inflation, basically."
Individual states have the legal right to raise their minimum wages above the $5.15 federal minimum, and at least 30 states and the District of Columbia already have. Meanwhile, Congress is considering two separate proposals to increase the federal minimum from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour in three stages over two years.
One worry for the state Senate Democrats is a proposed amendment that would tie any increase in the Indiana minimum wage to an expected - but not yet passed - increase in the federal minimum. The U.S. Senate version of the federal increase is part of the Iraq war-spending bill, which the president could veto, Lanane said. "No one knows if there will be an increase in the federal minimum wage, and we do not think Indiana should wait," he said.
Business groups such as the Indiana Chamber of Commerce historically have opposed a state minimum wage increase, arguing it would be a "job-killer." More recently, a manufacturers' lobby expressed concern that the state increase and federal increase would each raise the rate in three stages, but to different levels and on different timetables. That inconsistency could force employers to adjust minimum wages five or six times in a two-year period, if both bills passed.
Lanane had no objection to trying to synchronize a state increase to a federal increase, or to making it $7.25 instead of $7.50 an hour. "Our concern is, will there be a federal increase at all?" he said. If the minimum wage increase passes the Pensions and Labor committee, Lanane thinks all 17 Democratic senators and at least nine Republicans would vote for it n enough to pass it and send it back to the Indiana House.
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