...Overview of the Federal Minimum Wage The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a law that guarantees employees and youth a fair minimum wage and overtime pay. It is regulated by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL); it mandates employers to pay all nonexempt employees a federal minimum wage no less than the determine amount set by the government (U.S. DOL, 2011). Unfortunately, the federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 per hour and has remained the same since George W. Bush signed a law to change it on July 24, 2009 (Risher, 2013; U.S. DOL, 2011). So, why did so many government officials decline the increase of the federal minimum wage and why do they fear the positive impact that the increase will have on America? This paper intends to briefly discuss six laws, all pertaining to federal minimum wage introduced to the House of Representatives within a year and highlight one member of the senate who disapproved the law for passing. In addition, this paper will briefly point out statements made about why some Senators chose to decline the bill; and finally, this paper intends to briefly explain any legal issues preventing the wage increase and implications for management. Start of Hope: Minimum Wage Fairness United States senators and representatives have introduced numerous federal minimum wage bills to the House of Representatives in order to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) during their term. These bills were designed to either...
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...Bill H.R. 2150- Raise the Wage Act Bill H.R. 2150 should be passed, because US citizens getting paid minimum wage which is currently $7.25 (federally) and are not being paid nearly enough to even pay their house payment or rent each month. Even if an average minimum wage worker at $7.25 worked 40 hours a week for four weeks each month they would only be making 1,160 before taxes after taxes that’s hardly enough for car insurance, food, and clothes. If that worker has kids and they don’t even have enough for themselves how is life in the US even a reality? In 1938, the government established the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA was intended to establish a minimum wage across the states as well as overtime pay eligibility, and child labor standards. The Raise the Wage Act otherwise known as H.R. 2150 ammends the FLSA to raise minimum wage to $8.00 on January 1st, 2016 and additional raise of a dollar after each year....
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...aising the minimum wage is a bad idea because it would raise the price of things and would get people fired from minimum wage jobs, since the the owners would have to get more customers and if they don't then they would have to let people go or go out of business. My mom works in a restaurant in Long Beach. She's a cook. They already have about seven people working all together in the small restaurant. Even a sixteen year old is working in the restaurant, that can get up to 80 degrees in the summer time. My mom's restaurant once raised up the prices to see if they would get more money out of it. They did not. My mom said they had to fire someone because not enough money was coming in. When they Lowered the prices everything went back...
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...EN130.1.1 English Composition II Minimum Wage Poverty has become an ever growing problem in the United States. Many programs have been put into place to try and help those suffering from poverty, one is minimum wage, but is minimum wage helping people get out of poverty or keeping them in it? Minimum wage is the lowest possible wage a person can earn despite if the job may be worth more than minimum wage. With that the employees feel they are underpaid, and become unmotivated to perform their job. The government feels that minimum wage is acceptable median to decide a persons wage, but what they don’t take into account anymore is the inflation and cost-of-living that increases each year while minimum wage stays the same, forcing people to work long hours just to barely make enough to pay the bills. Its easy for the government not to care about such topics when they eat $1,000 a plate, which is more than some people make in a month. Although minimum wage was put into order to protect workers, can a minimum wage job really support you in a search for basic standards of living? And if not does the increase in minimum wage really help or hurt people surviving off of it? Its hard to find a good job with no college experience, and its very hard to go to school when you can’t even pay your own bills due to a minimum wage job. It’s a hard situation that isn’t fair to the hard working community of people who manage to keep...
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...have often argued, a raise would have different implications than If these workers were mostly adults struggling to raise a family, as many Democrats contended.” Not even a generation ago, it was said if you were making minimum wage you were most likely a teenager. Who is to tell if a 20 year old mother or a 20 year old college student was trying to take care of themselves on minimum wage, which happens all the time and everywhere? Sholeh says, MIT has developed a living wage calculator and came up with most American families cannot support themselves on minimum wage. How is someone to ever get caught up if they can never run? I work as a minimum wage worker for my past work life. I have never made more than that. I currently have waited tables for 3+ years. I as well get $2.13 hour, each week is about $20. In some these sources can be reliable and creditable. It is nearly impossible to pay bills and keep up in this generation making minimum wage. I am 21 years old and my bills a month are $956. I have no money to ever save. I don’t see that people can make a living on minimum wage unless rooming with someone, or having no bills. I still have the same believes as before reading these opinions. There is no logic for the government to not raise the minimum wage law. As economy rises, and the world mass grows, new developments, millions of dollars being wasted and there is still an excuse to not pay our hard working people a little more of what they deserve. I am pretty clear that...
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...the biggest issues that are going on today is should we raise the minimum wage? According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum. Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers” (Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers In 2011, 2012). According to the data, there are very few people getting paid at or below the federal minimum wage. Yet, people are complaining that the current wages are not enough. With wages at the current state, people are still living in poverty. With the new Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2015 (H.R. 1010), the minimum wage will rise from $7.25 to $10.10. The debate is whether the increase in wage will either benefit everyone (employees and businesses) or will this increase have negative effects and create more issues instead of fixing them. Will we end up paying more to get less? Background Here is some history on H.R. 1010 or better known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act. “The federal minimum wage originated in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 25, 1938. The law established a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour for all employees who produced products shipped...
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...Kelby Storm Rough Draft The minimum wage in America is a problem that is continuing to grow. This can be fixed by raising the minimum wage. In Webster's college dictionary "minimum wage" is defined as “the lowest hourly wage that may be paid to an employee” (“Websters College Dictionary” 845). The minimum wage determines what a human makes per hour which in America is not where it should be. At a job there is a low that can be set for how much the minimum is per hour worked. Many places put it at minimum wage just so that they can make as much money for the company without losing a bunch to pay the employees who are the one that keep the business running. Minimum wage is a very debatable topic as people view it as it is too high and others...
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...one of the hot topics for the government. Without student loans many people are not able to afford college. Since tuition has been increasing every year, more and more students drop out because they cannot afford to pay for the tuition. Another issue the United States deals with is minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage could help a large number of Americans backing their families and reduce dependence on government support. Student loans and minimum wage should increase to help the low income families with more opportunities even though student debt and minimum wage hold the economy back. Student loan debt is a big issue in the United States. Actually, 37 million Americans as...
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...federal minimum wage. Minimum wage is the amount of money an employer can legally pay an employee per hour. It makes sure workers are compensated fairly and protected from exploitation. Each state minimum varies in amount; however, the federal minimum currently sets at $7.25 per hour (Chang 12). Increasing the minimum wage would help workers and families without harming the business economy....
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...Days I really had no clue what I was in for. I was so excited and the event surpassed my expectations and I was in awe. For this paper I will discuss my professional experience at Advocacy days and the itinerary we had. Then I will discuss my insights to what I observed and what it entailed. I will then describe the legislative process that I was able to see. Last I will use sources to tell you about the controversial issue of minimum wage while we were there. I highly recommend Advocacy Days with the Idaho Chapter of the NASW to anyone looking to get into the social work profession. A great learning experience. My professional experience during these two days was a lot to absorb. The first day...
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...The cost of living in America can be expensive, especially for those who are minimum wage workers. The $7.25 per hour can barely help workers afford their basic needs. Minimum wage has a huge domino effect, when people who make minimum wage get done paying their bills they are left with little to no money to spend, which means businesses lose customers, and when businesses lose customers this weakens our economy causing people to go into debt, and turn to the government for assistance. President Obama said “Raising the minimum wage will benefit about 28 million workers across the country, and it will help businesses too (Lee).” Minimum wage should be increased to provide families with living wages, increase the employment rates, and increase...
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...The first minimum wage ever established in Ohio was set at $.25 an hour (about $4 now) in 1938 and today it is $7.25. The average cost of a house in 1938 was $4000 (about $64,500 now) and today it is $245,000. You may glance at these and think that the higher expenses aren’t bad, the minimum wage is also higher. Nevertheless, the average earnings for hard working citizens has not changed. Prices are increasing, but most people’s stipends aren’t. Consequently, they are having to pay greater sums to live while the minimum wage workers keep a relatively same ratio between receiving and spending. To solve this dilemma, the minimum wage should not be changed. In short, this would be the best solution to this obstacle. However, there is a plethora of things that could be done to better benefit the public rather than simply not changing the minimum wage and each of these solutions come with pros and cons. First off, raising the minimum wage would not make the lives of the people living off of minimum wage any better than they are now. The accent would devise a small amount of...
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...And it will help businesses, too - raising the wage will put more money in people's pockets, which they will pump back into the economy by spending it on goods and services in their communities.” While the technological innovation and scientific revolution has increased, so has the cost of living. This is why minimum wage must go up: because the cost of living has increased. Education is essential to one wishing to work even a minimum wage job, and many people living in the middle-class or poverty level are unable to afford education properly. This exhibits the potential energy of classism bubbling to the surface as economic inequality. Companies should be required to pay workers what they deserve, which is substantially more than what the minimum wage is today. According to a 2015 BLS Report by the United States Government, 35.5 Percent of minimum wage workers are least forty years old and a whopping 56.4% of women.1 Without doubt this opens way to a new piece of evidence to discuss when talking about minimum wage. These companies are vehement to pay the working backbone of their very nature - especially fast-food companies - but have no problem installing self-checkout kiosks in franchises like McDonalds to limit their minimum wage workers. This poses an even more important question than before: if we demand that minimum wage be raised, will...
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...the federal minimum wage has become more of a consistently pressing issue in the United States since President Obama spoke of the matter during his 2014 State of the Union Address, where he stated that he intended on raising the minimum wage by 40%, from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. While he and his supporters argue that this would work most beneficially for America’s economy and would not result in any loss of jobs for citizens, others argue that, on the contrary, this would drastically affect current minimum wage earning employees and would also cut almost 500,000 jobs on top of other detrimental consequences. While both sides consider legitimate concerns, the argument still remains on if the risk is worth an unknown outcome. Presently,...
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...Each one of my paragraphs will talk about income. The amount of income you earn depends on the type of job you have. My career of choice would be a sportscaster. With this job, I will be able to live a lavish lifestyle. This is because the amount of money I will be making should be more than what I actually need. I will have a loving husband, three kids, and a successful career. Each month, I plan to spend a few hundred dollars on bills, groceries, gas, and other necessities. We will occasionally go out to eat, take family vacations, and do fun family activities. To make sure that all my expenses are taken care of, I am going to do my best at finding a career. If I chose to live off of a job that paid minimum wage, I wouldn’t be able...
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