Tyrrell Brown is constantly thinking about money.
“All the time, every day, right now,” said Brown, 24.
Concerns over minimum wage hike
Business owners have mixed reactions to Obama’s proposal to raise minimum wage to $9 an hour.
Four things to know about Obama's minimum wage increase
It's a big increase in most states, and the current minimum is below historical levels. But Obama's plan might increase unemployment, and there are cheaper options.
He makes minimum wage as a cashier at the Family Dollar in Forest Heights, in Prince George’s County near the District boundary. He pulls out his phone for an accounting of his weekly take-home pay: $176.63, $187.95, $252.42, $229.99.
It’s a reminder of all he has done, and can’t yet do, on $7.25 an hour.
“I’m thankful,” Brown said. “Without the job, I could see myself not being the father I am.”
But even with the job, the income of his girlfriend, Janise Creek, and support from their parents, they can’t afford to get their own apartment with their daughter Jayla, who is 8 months old, has two front teeth and is always eating. Or to get his Jeep running. Or for him to get back to the criminal justice courses he left to get a paycheck when Janise got pregnant.
“Who can live off this little bit of money every week?” he said.
President Obama called in his State of the Union address for raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour. Many congressional Republicans oppose the idea; House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) says it could reduce employment. But polls have shown at least two-thirds of Americans support an even bigger hike.
A majority of state senators in Maryland are co-sponsoring a bill to raise the minimum wage in the state further, to $10 per hour by 2015. Both the Obama and Maryland proposals include automatic future raises to keep up with the cost of living, an idea Obama noted he and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, agreed on during last year’s campaign.
“The value of the minimum wage shouldn’t be eroded, and it has been,” said Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Garagiola (D-Montgomery), a key sponsor of the Maryland bill. “If we’re going to have a minimum wage in this country, or the state of Maryland, it needs to be a wage people can live off of.”
Tens of thousands of people make the minimum wage in Virginia and Maryland, from warehouse workers in Manassas to book sorters near Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The District sets its minimum hourly wage $1 higher than the federal level, so it is currently $8.25. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said this month that he might ask the D.C. Council to raise it, even without a hike in the federal minimum wage.
A full-time minimum-wage worker makes about $15,000 a year. That’s above the poverty line of about $11,500 for an individual but just below the line for a two-person household. Raising the wage to $9 an hour would increase pay by about $75 a week; taking it to $10 would increase it nearly $120 a week.
But some business owners have balked, saying that their businesses need the flexibility to set wages as personnel and circumstances allow.
One of those is Michelle Kwon, Janise Creek’s boss.
The Korean immigrant went into business 15 years ago, first selling coffee in Arlington and now cheese steaks and lattes in a low-end mall in Hillcrest Heights, just south of the District in Prince George’s.
Loading...
Comments