Iowa Senate votes to raise Iowa’s minimum wage

DES MOINES - Without debate, the Iowa Senate voted 27-22 Tuesday to boost the state's minimum wage to $8.75 an hour by July 1, 2016 - providing a 75-cent hourly raise to the current $7.25 minimum on July 1 and a second 75-cent jump one year later.

'Quite unbelievable,” said Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, floor manager of Senate File 269, when no one got up on the Iowa Senate floor to talk about a minimum-wage bill supported by Democrats who run the Senate but not likely to see action when it gets to the GOP-led Iowa House.

'Iowa's lowest-paid workers have waited seven years for a pay increase,” said Bisignano, noting the last wage boost to $7.25 an hour occurred when Democrat Chet Culver was governor. 'There is absolutely no reason for them to wait any longer.”

Under the Senate-passed bill, Iowa's minimum wage would go to $8 an hour on July 1 and then increase to $8.75 on July 1, 2016. Sen. Rick Bertrand, R-Sioux City, joined 26 majority Democrats in passing S.F. 269.

If approved by both legislative chambers and signed by Gov. Terry Branstad, Bisignano said the compromise legislation once fully implemented would raise the yearly income of a full-time worker making the hourly minimum by $3,120 a year and $6,240 for working couple's struggling to make ends meet.

Bisignano cited Economic Policy Institute data indicating that increasing Iowa's minimum wage to $8.75 an hour would help 12 percent of all Iowa workers - with 112,000 seeing a direct increase in their wages and almost 70,000 receiving an indirect increase as the Iowa wage floor moves up.

Also Tuesday, on a straight party-line vote majority Democrats approved legislation they say would help protect workers from wage theft. Passage of Senate File 270 came on a 26-23 vote.

The measure, which faces an uncertain future in the Iowa House, would require employers to keep records of terms of employment and protect co-workers who testify against employers from retaliation. The bill also would eliminate employers' defense that they unintentionally failed to pay employees.

'Wage theft really is Iowa's biggest crime,” said Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, the bill's floor manager who contended that unscrupulous practices by some Iowa employers cost workers about $600 million a year.