10 results for tag: Virginia

Advocates want Northam to expand minimum wage bill, others say recession demands delay

By Ned Oliver April 1, 2020 Gov. Ralph Northam is facing dueling pressure campaigns to amend marquee legislation passed by the General Assembly last month raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour over three years. On one side, farmworkers are pushing for Northam to strike language allowing agricultural operations to continue to pay them $7.25 an hour, an exemption they say is rooted in Jim Crow-era racial animus. On the other side, business groups, Republican leaders and the Virginia Municipal League, which represents all 38 cities in the state, are asking Northam to delay the legislation altogether, arguing the sudden economic downturn ...

New Minimum Wage Legislation Will Strengthen Virginia’s Families & Economy

By Lowkell | March 30, 2020 From the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis: New Minimum Wage Legislation Will Strengthen Virginia’s Families & Economy Nearly 800,000 people will benefit, including essential workers during COVID-19 In the 2020 session, the General Assembly passed historic legislation to increase the minimum wage in Virginia for the first time in more than 11 years. The bill, if signed into law, will increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 on January 1, 2021. Virginia’s minimum wage would reach $12 by 2023. The discussion in this piece: Explains how minimum wage increases help to stimulate the economy, ...

Letter: Bare minimum wage not keeping up with cost of living in Virginia

Kassee Sosa Manassas | Mar 17, 2020 In Virginia, minimum wage is $7.25. At the bare minimum, everyone should have their necessities met, but this is almost impossible to do so with the living wage that has been set by the state. It doesn’t make sense for the minimum wage in Virginia to be so low when the richest 20% of the population owns 84% of the wealth in the United States. Read More...

Lawmakers vote to repeal minimum wage exemption for nannies and maids

By Ned Oliver February 28, 2020 Virginia lawmakers finalized passage of legislation Friday that repeals minimum wage exemptions for domestic workers such as maids and nannies. The advocacy group Care in Action, which advocates nationally for the workers, said Virginia is the first state in the South to adopt such protections. “We’ve been waiting for this victory for 400 years,” Alexsis Rodgers, the group’s state director, said in a statement. “Due to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow era laws, domestic workers were left unprotected and seen as ‘less than’ compared to other workers. Today, we let Virginia and the rest of the ...

COMMENTARY: Foresters’ view on the $15/hour minimum wage

By Kennon Morris / Feb. 25, 2020 The Virginia Forest Products Association represents mainly small independent businesses in the forest products industry throughout rural Virginia—from sawmills, to loggers, to truck drivers, to equipment dealers. Our industry accounts for approximately 108,000 jobs with an industry impact of $21 billion to the commonwealth, representing the third largest contributor to the state’s economy. We are primarily located in rural Virginia, where the cost of living is lower. But we supply jobs and revenue all across the state, something I am not sure people in urban Virginia really understand. Our industry is ...