DC, MontCo and PG Vote to Raise Minimum Wage
Sunday, December 1, 2013
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Three votes
last week kept the metro Washington area on the
cutting edge of efforts across
the country to increase the minimum wage, but
fell significantly short of
supporters’ hopes. A DC City Council
committee last Monday unanimously approved
a bill that would raise the city’s minimum
wage to $11.50 an hour, one of the
nation’s highest, by 2016. On Tuesday, the
Montgomery County Council voted to
establish a county minimum wage and raise that
hourly rate to $11.50 by 2017;
Prince George's County Council okayed the same
increases the next day. However,
Montgomery County – whose full Council was
the first to vote -- “missed the
opportunity to make history,” said Metro
Washington Council President Jos Williams.
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and
Councilmembers Roger Berliner, George
Leventhal and Hans Riemer “undermined the
regional pact” between Montgomery
County, Prince George’s County and the
District of Columbia by delaying to
increase to 2017 and stripping out indexing
future increases to the CPI. “This
is not the kind of leadership we expect and
deserve in Montgomery County,”
Williams said. "Shame on Ike, George, Roger and
Hans.” In contrast,
Williams credited Councilmember Marc Elrich
“for real leadership in brokering
the regional agreement and Council President
Nancy Navarro and Councilmember
Valerie Ervin for stepping up by co-sponsoring
the original bill that would
have changed the lives of millions of workers
in this region.” The DC City
Council will take its minimum wage bill up
tomorrow and supporters say they hope
it will accept the recommendation of the
committee.