Senator Coons votes to raise minimum wage

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) voted Wednesday to advance the Minimum Wage Fairness Act, legislation he cosponsored to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in five years. The bill would increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour over three years, boosting the earnings of more than 78,000 Delawareans and lifting more than 11,000 out of poverty. The measure was blocked by a Republican filibuster.

“No American who works full time should have to live in poverty,” Senator Coons said. “Over the last four decades, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has eroded by more than 30 percent, leaving millions of hardworking Americans and their families struggling to make ends meet. In Delaware and across the nation, the majority of minimum wage workers are women, a fact that continues to feed our state’s long-standing gender wage gap. Raising wages to $10.10 would lift a family of three above the poverty line, giving them financial security, income to spend at local businesses, and a ladder into the middle class. This is the right thing to do for our workers and our economy, and the Senate should have come together today to get it done. Every American deserves a fair shot at a living wage, and I’ll keep working with my colleagues to move this effort forward.”

The minimum wage today pays just $15,080 per year — $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. The Minimum Wage Fairness Act would boost the annual minimum wage to $21,000, lifting millions of families above the poverty line. The bill would provide for automatic annual increases to the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation and would also gradually raise the minimum wage for tipped workers — which currently stands at just $2.13 an hour — for the first time in more than 20 years.

Nationally, the Minimum Wage Fairness Act would increase the wages of 28 million American workers, more than half of whom are women. In Delaware, where women make up nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers, 47,000 women would receive a raise.