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Maryland is now the third state to phase in a $15 minimum wage so far this year, and the sixth overall. In February, New Jersey and Illinois did so, too.
While Hogan’s veto was not surprising (he has always opposed a $15 minimum), it’s a striking position in a state where the $15 minimum wage is so popular with voters in Maryland and across the country.
The law will benefit about 573,000 workers in Maryland who currently earn less than $15 —about 22 percent of the state’s workforce, according to the National Employment Law Project.
Advocates for the wage hike didn’t get everything they wanted in the bill. For example, it won’t eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers, which is $3.63, and future changes to the minimum wage aren’t tied to inflation. The bill also continues to let businesses pay agricultural workers less than the minimum wage, and allows employers to pay young workers less, too.
But the push for a $15 wage is gaining support across the country, and has even reached Congress. For the first time ever, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — another sign that the public pressure is paying off.
It all started with frustrated McDonald’s workers in Illinois
Passing the $15 minimum wage bill is still a major win for the fast-food workers whose movement helped 5 million workers get pay raises in 2019.
Within five years, they’ve transformed an improbable proposal into a popular policy — one that would address, in part, the slow wage growth American workers are experiencing.
The workers’ movement, called Fight for $15, organized strikes and ralliesall across the country. But they saw little success until 2016, when California became the first state to hike hourly wages to $15, followed by Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, DC.
Business groups, meanwhile, are not happy about the fight for $15. And neither are their Republican allies in Congress. They’ve long pushed back against any effort to raise the wage floor at the federal level, claiming it would destroy small business and trigger massive job losses.
