President Signs ‘Pro-Work’ Bill Lowest-Paid 11 Percent Will Get Increase Of 90 Cents An Hour

President Clinton signed a minimum-wage bill Tuesday that will give the lowest-paid 11 percent of the American work force a raise of 90 cents an hour and lay Democratic claim to a powerful issue for the fall campaigns.

In the first of three bill signings in his pre-convention week, Clinton called the measure “pro-work, pro-business and pro-family.” Evoking a venerable Democratic tradition, he fixed his signature in a South Lawn ceremony on the desk used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor secretary, Frances Perkins.

“This bill says to working people of America: If you’re willing to … go to work, your work will be honored,” said Clinton, who was flanked by a crowd of minimum-wage workers, members of Congress and other supporters.

The first stage of the increase, a 50-cent-an-hour hike, to $4.75, will take effect Oct. 1. That will be followed on Sept. 1, 1997 by the second, 40-cent-an-hour increase, to $5.15 an hour.

Those raises will give an $1,800-a-year increase to the $4.25-an-hour minimum wage workers, who gross $8,840 a year if they are employed full-time.

The bill also contained a series of features added in its final stages to soften opposition from small business and Republicans, who had battled the wage hike and argued it would kill jobs.

Among other things, those features will give more generous equipment write-offs for small businesses, provide a new type of pension plan for companies with 100 or fewer employees, and allow stay-at-home spouses who are not wage earners to contribute as much as $2,000 a year tax free to Individual Retirement Accounts.

Congress passed the minimum wage measure Aug. 2 after a ferocious months-long partisan battle that saw GOP leaders ultimately change positions and support the bill.

Their switch allowed Republicans to avoid voter wrath on an issue that polls show to have the support of more than 80 percent of the public.

Corrected for inflation, the minimum wage had been at its lowest value in 40 years.

The campaign of GOP nominee Bob Dole, who long resisted its passage, praised the legislation but suggested the initiative would do less for workers than Dole’s proposed 15 percent tax cut. “The signing of today’s minimum wage bill is a helpful, but small step toward addressing the economic anxiety of Americans workers,” the campaign said.

While Clinton trumpeted his support for the wage hike, he actually came late to the battle. For the first two years of his administration, he virtually ignored the issue.

After Republicans took control of Congress, the AFL-CIO and a small band of liberals led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., pushed it to the top of the Democrats’ priority list.

Before heading for the Chicago convention this weekend, Clinton will sign two other landmark bills - a bipartisan measure to give millions greater access to health insurance and a GOP bill to overhaul welfare.