Madison Kwiecinski 

News Editor 

mvk5945@psu.edu

The Federal Minimum wage was created in 1938 while Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, through Congress under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Not long after President Roosevelt signed this important bill that helped  revolutionize the American Labor system, he warned, in one of his fireside chats to, “…Not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, …tell you…that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

This statement was made over 80 years ago now and it stands just as true today. More often than not, the people opposing a minimum wage increase are not those same people who are actually making minimum wage. The minimum wage should be “the minimum” amount people can live somewhat comfortably under. 

In Pennsylvania, the minimum wage has not been raised or adjusted for inflation since 2009, over a decade ago. The minimum wage is currently still remaining at the federal minimum standard of $7.25. Dozens of states have taken it upon themselves to raise their own state minimum wage, increasing fair labor standards around their states. 

After the pandemic, businesses are hiring everywhere you go. Pennsylvania simply cannot find enough people to fill in these high turnover rate jobs. This is simply because no one wants to work for the wages they are offering. Especially when all of these typical customer service jobs are understaffed, making the job all the more work. 

The summer before I went to college I worked at Sandcastle, a popular water park in my area, owned by the same company as Kennywood park. Surprisingly, when I worked at Sandcastle, a very common job for underage kids, we all made above minimum wage. Minimum wage jobs are not exclusive to college students, and jobs that pay above minimum wage are not only for adults and families. 

To put it simply, this was not a job people wanted to do for minimum wage, it requires long hours outside in the sun and highschool students believed they could make better money or at least find easier work elsewhere. If jobs aimed at highschool students cannot find enough people willing to work for such low wages, how can they expect that adults with families will accept these same terms? If Sandcastle can find a way to afford to raise wages to mainly benefit underage workers, companies nationwide can do the same thing to benefit their own workers. 

Governor Tom Wolf had been calling for a minimum wage increase each year consistently now for 7 years.  Wolf wants to raise the minimum wage immediately to $12 an hour and then incrementally increase it until it reaches $15 an hour by 2027. Erie Republican state Senator  Dan Laughlin introduced Senate Bill 672 on May 11th 2021 to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour and index future raises to the cost of living. 

Although a larger rise in minimum wage is preferable since PA has gone so long without one, any of these minimum wage increase plans would be acceptable. What is not acceptable, is to sit around and do nothing about it for another week, another year, or another decade. It is time to raise the PA minimum wage and allow trickle-down economics to function as it should.