When a bill to raise the Louisiana minimum wage by just $1.25 failed, advocates didn't reduce their demands—in fact, they did the opposite.
On Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate voted against a bill that would have raised Louisiana’s minimum wage to $8.50 an hour by 2020. “Not advancing this legislation is a step backwards for our families and our children who live in poverty but want to work,” said Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards.
But just two days later, supporters of a $15-an-hour bill introduced by State Representative Joe Bouie testified in a hearing before the House Labor and Industrial Committee—a bold statement given the clear leanings of the legislature. The committee unsurprisingly rejected the bill, but the hearing was an opportunity for advocates to make their case in front of committee members.
“Can any of you live on $290 a week?” said Ben Zucker, co-director of advocacy organization Step Up Louisiana. “Too many of these low-wage workers working for multinational corporations ... making record corporate profits come into our state and pay our workers so low they can't afford to eat,” Zucker said, as reported by New Orleans’s Gambit. Louisiana is one of five states without a state minimum wage, so the federal minimum of $7.25 is in effect.
State Senator Troy Carter of New Orleans, who sponsored the $8.50 bill, has sponsored minimum-wage legislation for the past three years, but each attempt has failed. He has also sponsored a bill that would allow voters to determine whether to pass a constitutional amendment raising the minimum wage. (As of 2016, 76 percent of Louisianans support raising the wage.) Bouie’s bill was the first $15 minimum-wage legislation introduced in the Louisiana legislature.
One in five people in Louisiana lives in poverty, and the state has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, as do Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi, which also don’t have state minimum wages. Sixteen other states have wage floors that match the federal minimum of $7.25.
