Today the Mayor of Pittsburgh issued an executive order raising minimum wage to $15 for all workers employed by the City, which will affect about 300 employees in the City’s workforce, with the $15 hourly wage achieved in 2021. The first phase in is to occur at the start of 2017 with a floor of $12.50. The order notes that “the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour equals a yearly gross income of $15,080, not nearly enough for a full time worker to live without public assistance, yet alone raise a family or own a home”, but it does not state if any of the City’s employees are being paid at the Federal minimum.
The executive order requests legislation that would require firms that contract with the City–not City government itself–to “…pay their workers $15 hourly, or face penalties”.
Just nine months ago the City Council passed and the Mayor signed an ordinance that would incentivize businesses that raised the minimum wage for their employees by offering recognition from the City by way of free advertising space. Regulations for the “minimum wage employer regulation program” were written up by the City Finance Department. The wage rate to receive recognition? $10.10 an hour, a rate that the ordinance states “…is not invasive enough to negatively affect consumer trends or business”.
So in less than one year’s time we have seen the City’s preferred minimum wage to be paid by businesses by $4.90 and the approach shift from incentivizing to penalizing. And the same City department will have to enforce both approaches should legislation from the executive order come to pass.