AFTER YEARS OF ADVOCACY, Massachusetts’s minimum hourly wage hit $15 in 2023. And workers groups say it’s already behind the times.
“What we’ve seen is that, yes, that minimum wage did increase, but the pace of inflation and the basic cost of necessities of a working family – whether it be housing, whether it be food, whether it be cost of childcare – has just really skyrocketed and wages have not kept up with it,” Enid Eckstein, a steering committee member of the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, said on The Codcast. “And it’s ironic that we like to pride ourselves in Massachusetts on how great we are, but even Connecticut now is ahead of us, and many other states are moving ahead of us.”
Thirty states guarantee higher wages than the $7.25 an hour required by the federal government. As the “Fight for $15” crossed the country over the last decade, Massachusetts joined states like Oregon, New York, California, and Connecticut in reaching or exceeding a $15 hourly wage. Areas with higher costs of living have gone even further, like New York City’s $16 hourly wage and Washington, DC, with the country’s highest minimum hourly wage at $17.
Three questions were heading toward the ballot in 2018, which would have raised the minimum wage, instituted paid leave, and lowered the state sales tax. To get ahead of them, Massachusetts lawmakers reached a so-called “grand bargain,” raising the state’s minimum wage gradually to $15 for most workers and to $6.75 for tipped workers.
Advocates are increasingly seeing $15 an hour – set to become the law in more jurisdictions in the next few years – as a floor. Their eyes are on $20.
The Raise Up Massachusetts coalition of community organizations, faith-based groups, and labor unions is backing legislation that would raise the general hourly minimum wage to $20 by 2027, then indexed to inflation, and the minimum for tipped workers to $12 an hour and then 60 percent of any future minimum wage hike.
The politics are fraught. In Massachusetts, a living wage is rapidly approaching double the current minimum wage, but rough state revenue projections plus the continued strain of the pandemic means many employers say they can’t stomach a hike.
“It’s so ironic that in the pandemic we held up the example of essential workers – people who provided childcare, people who provided personal care, people who did the work in the supermarkets – and yet we can’t show them the dignity they need to give them a decent living standard and a decent wage,” Eckstein said. “To me that is just such a sad statement about our economy.”
A study conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business on a potential $20 minimum wage in Massachusetts concluded the proposed wage change could lead to tens of thousands of job losses over the next decade. More than half of the jobs impacted would be in small businesses with less than 500 employees, according to the study.
“The business lobby will cry, oh my gosh, this is the end of the world,” Eckstein expects. “And there are certain industries that obviously have a tighter margin, so we would expect that some small businesses would say that. But I feel like it’s often the child who cried wolf too many times, because while that might be their fear, the experience is very different.”
When the wage has risen, she said, “the Massachusetts economy did not shut down. The Massachusetts economy thrived. But at the same time, for people who were on the lower end of the economy, they got further and further behind.”
As the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition pushes for a $20 minimum wage, a parallel ballot effort aims to rethink tipped wages. One Fair Wage, a national coalition led by a California activist, is behind a ballot campaign to raise the state’s minimum wage for tipped workers from $6.75 to $15 while restructuring the tip system.
“Assuming that they’re on the ballot, we believe that Massachusetts voters will obviously have the opportunity to put their opinion out, and so be it,” Eckstein said. “And that would supersede anything we’re doing on our legislation.”
As with prior campaigns to raise the wage, the legislative process is a first volley, with a ballot option in the back pocket. Raise Up Massachusetts successfully pushed the Fair Share Amendment ballot campaign in 2022, which implemented a tax on incomes over $1 million for transportation and education revenue.
“We’re optimistic that we have more support, and we’re close to a majority in the House and Senate in terms of co-sponsors,” Eckstein said. “But am I confident that we’re gonna pass something? No crystal balls here. What I can say is that, if something does not happen in this session, we are committed to the long-term fight here; whether it’s a legislative fight or whether it’s a fight to take it to the ballot.”
