Compromise reached on minimum wage increase

The House and Senate appear to have reached a compromise on competing proposals to raise the state’s minimum wage.

Essentially, the House gave in and agreed to most provisions the Senate wanted in approving the proposal on a vote of 40-29 on Saturday.

As it stands now, Senate Bill 324, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Ben Altamirano, D-Silver City, would raise the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour in January 2008 and $7.50 per hour a year after that. It does not allow automatic cost-of-living increases and exempts agricultural workers. It prevents cities and counties that haven’t already raised their minimum wages above the state’s from doing so until 2010.

The Senate wanted that prohibited until 2013.

With that exception, the bill is almost exactly what the Senate has already approved. Several senators have told me they’ll vote to approve it when it goes back to them for concurrence. The bill would then head to Gov. Bill Richardson for a signature.

The House had originally approved a version of the bill that would raise the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour in July and $7.50 per hour in January 2008, included indexing that would increase the minimum wage in the future to keep up with inflation, and did not prohibit local governments from passing their own, higher wage increases.

Debate over those points killed the proposal to raise the minimum wage last year.