Maryland gets statewide living wage

from the Toronto Star
Under law, employers with state contracts will have to pay $11.30 an hour in urban corridor, $8.50 an hour in rural areas, in move to reduce poverty
May 09, 2007
Steven Greenhouse
New York Times
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley signed the first statewide living wage bill in the United States yesterday, giving fresh momentum to a movement that seeks to raise wages through legislation.
Under the law, employers with state contracts will generally have to pay workers a minimum amount - $11.30 (U.S.) an hour in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and $8.50 an hour in the rural counties, where wages and prices are usually lower.
The Maryland state minimum wage is $6.15 an hour, one dollar above the federal minimum.
" This law lifts tens of thousands of families out of poverty and into the middle class," said Tom Hucker, a first-term Democratic delegate to the Maryland House and before that the executive director of Progressive Maryland, the main group backing the bill. "Today Maryland shows the rest of the country a good way to honour work and fight poverty.''
Nationwide, 145 cities and counties have enacted living-wage bills, which generally require businesses that receive government contracts - and sometimes those that receive subsidies - to pay an amount above the federal or state minimum wage. The highest living wage in the nation is $14.75 an hour in Fairfax, Calif.
In 1994, Baltimore became the first city in the country to require a living wage for city contracts.
Earlier this year, it looked as if the Maryland living-wage effort might founder because many businesses and Republicans had bitterly opposed the bill when it called for a uniform living wage of $11.95 an hour.
They said it would inflate costs and cut into profits.
But O'Malley, a Democrat, was able to win support by creating two wage levels and by reducing the top level to $11.30. Last month, the state Senate passed the bill 31-16; the House approved it 91-49.
" This is a history-making day for us in Maryland," said Delegate Herman L. Taylor II, a Democrat who was the main author of the legislation.
" Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, but 1 in 10 Marylanders is in poverty.
" This should help reduce poverty, and this is important because it helps fight poverty without using public assistance programs.''
Some Republicans criticized the legislation, saying it put residents of rural areas at a disadvantage by relegating them to a lower living wage.
When Maryland's previous governor, Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, vetoed a living-wage bill in 2004, he criticized it because it set a uniform statewide living wage when there were substantial differences in the cost of living across the state.
Some Republicans and business leaders said the law would increase state spending when Maryland was facing a $1.5 billion budget deficit.
Ellen Valentino, the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said her group strongly opposed the legislation but was glad to secure an exemption for businesses with 10 or fewer workers when they received contracts worth less than $500,000. The law also exempts nonprofit groups.
" We think wage decisions are best left to business owners,'' Valentino said.