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Mayor Fischer now backs $15 federal minimum wage, despite opposing $10.10 in Louisville
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| Contributor | ev0lv |
| Last Edited | ev0lv Feb 28, 2020 01:42pm |
| Category | Statement |
| News Date | Feb 28, 2020 05:30am |
| Description | Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said Wednesday that there "absolutely" should be a federal minimum wage hike, calling $15 an hour a starting point.
"Are we talking about the ability for our citizens to just survive? Or do we want to create conditions where people can thrive?" Fischer said, at a Washington Post panel event with other officials from across the country. "We're a long way from thriving."
The stance is an interesting one, given that Louisville had its own debate about the minimum wage during Fischer's time in office — when he expressed concern that $10.10 an hour was too high a wage.
That $10.10 hike, he said in late 2014, could hurt some businesses and lead to "quite a bit" of lost jobs.
In fact, he campaigned against that high of a rate and offered a counter-proposal that he called a "balanced approach" of $8.75 an hour on the eve of Metro Council's vote, according to news reports at the time.
The council ultimately settled on a compromise of $9, which passed in December 2014, before being struck down by the state Supreme Court.
Adjusted for inflation, the $10.10 per hour rate in 2014 that Fischer felt was too high would equally about $11.01 per hour today. The $15 per hour wage he now backs would translate to $13.77 per hour in 2014.
Fischer spokeswoman Jean Porter said in an emailed statement on Thursday that the mayor's comments Wednesday were "wholly consistent" with previous stances because his goal was always "to strike a balance between increasing the wage and reducing the possibility of job loss."
Throughout those discussions, he repeated that raising the state minimum wage or federal minimum wage was preferable to a local minimum wage increase, she said, because that would "create a level playing field for all employers and all communities, and reduce the chance of job loss from city to city or region to region." |
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