Minimum wage to rise
OLYMPIA – Washington state officials announced Friday that the state’s minimum wage will increase by 12 cents to $8.67 on Jan. 1.
The state Department of Labor and Industries’ decision came after a three-week delay brought on by conflicting legal opinions raised by the state attorney general and the authors of the 1998 voter initiative that ties the minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index.
This year was the first year that the state wage didn’t go up since the initiative passed, because inflation, as measured by the price index, fell last year. It’s now growing again, but at a slower rate.
Recent federal numbers showed an overall increase in the index, though it’s still lower than the last time the state minimum wage increased in January 2009.
The state agency had asked Attorney General Rob McKenna if the state could increase the minimum wage if the price index increases to less than the level the current wage is based upon. McKenna said no, but the Washington state Labor Council, the group behind Initiative 688, opposed McKenna’s interpretation.
Labor and Industries spokeswoman Kim Contris said that the state ultimately made the decision to raise the rate “based on how we believe a court would interpret the law.”
“We really wanted to correctly implement the law,” she said. “We recognize there could be confusion and additional cost if we made a mistake and the court overturned the decision.”
While Washington state’s current rate of $8.55 an hour is the already the highest state minimum wage in the nation, a few cities, like San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M., have their own laws and have higher rates. San Francisco’s current rate of $9.79 will increase to $9.92 next year. The federal minimum wage is $7.25.
Oregon, which also has an initiative-based minimum wage law, announced last month that its minimum wage was going up by 10 cents to $8.50 an hour next year.
Colorado’s minimum wage dropped slightly this year, from $7.28 to the federal level of $7.25, because of the drop in inflation, but there is a proposal there to raise it to $7.36 on Jan. 1.
Other states with adjustable minimum wages are Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, and Vermont. Most states that tie the wage to inflation make no provision for lowering the amount, including Washington.