INDIANAPOLIS - A bill to increase Indiana's minimum wage is still alive, and its author said if it passes a Senate committee, he thinks the full Senate will approve it.
Significant changes could be in store for the legislation, House Bill 1027, which would boost the state minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.50 an hour over 18 months.
One proposed Senate amendment to the bill would scale back the increase, to no more than $6.50 an hour. Another would synchronize any increase in the state minimum wage to action Congress may take to raise the federal minimum.
On Wednesday, the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee heard lengthy testimony from witnesses for and against the proposed increase.
"Seven dollars or $7.50 an hour won't give anybody the American dream, but it might keep them from a few nightmares," said the Rev. Richard E. Willoughby, pastor of Promised Land Christian Community Church in Indianapolis.
The committee could vote on the bill and amendments next week, said the chairman, Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn.
Individual states have the right to increase their state minimum wages above the federal minimum. Thirty states and the District of Columbia already have.
Indiana, however, remains at $5.15, the same level as the last federal minimum wage increase, in 1997.
The bill's author, Rep. John Day, D-Indianapolis, and its Senate co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Bray, R-Martinsville, said after 10 years, the state is overdue to catch up with inflation. An estimated 30,000 workers in Indiana - out of a state population of 6.5 million - earn the minimum wage, Bray said.
Day said such an increase would primarily benefit working-poor women, not the stereotypical teens earning discretionary income at fast-food jobs.
Barbara Boling, president of the Indiana NAACP, testified that because of inflation, the current minimum wage has regressed to the spending power it had in 1955. The typical minimum wage worker, she said, would have to work almost an eight-hour shift just to afford a tank of gasoline. "It is shameful that this even has to be debated," she said.
But debated it was. Testifying against the increase was University of Georgia economics professor Joseph J. Sabia. Armed with statistics and studies, Sabia said increasing the minimum has no overall effect on poverty rates, and actually may hurt workers by "redistributing poverty" among low-income earners, he testified.
Day's bill would increase the minimum wage to $6 in September, $6.75 next March and $7.50 in September 2008. Meanwhile, Congress is also considering a phased-in raise in the federal minimum, up to $7.25 an hour, but on a different timetable.
Day said some legislators want to tie the state increase to the federal. "Several members in both the House and Senate have said, 'We can live with the federal bill, but not above.' I sense that's the will of the group, if I'm going to get a bill," Day said.
Another proposed amendment would remove wording House Republicans added to Day's bill that increased the inheritance-tax exemption from $100,000 to $200,000. Day said that if it isn't removed, his bill will be procedurally stalled.
"So whether we're for it or not is beside the point. Because if it stays in, then we have a bill that goes to a committee where it will never be heard," Day said.
Day wasn't sure if there are the votes to get HB 1027 out of the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee, but if it makes it to the Senate floor, "honestly, I think it'll pass," he said. April 11 is the last day for the Senate to approve House bills.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has said that he could sign a minimum-wage increase bill, as long as it was within reason.