labor lawAdivision of labor law center

It had just been on Monday that the Tennessee minimum wage bill had passed the House by the vote of 59 to 37. That vote had come with the debate that Jackson was talking about, along with Republican attempts to skipper the bill and add amendments to it that would have watered it down. The voting went pretty much along party lines, with all the no votes coming Republicans, and all he yes votes coming from Democrats, with seven Republicans voted yes as well.

The new Tennessee minimum wage would have allowed the state to adopt whatever the federal minimum wage is. At the moment, that would make the Tennessee minimum wage $5.15 per hour. The Tennessee minimum wage would have changed whenever the federal minimum wage would have changed. So for instance, if the federal minimum wage bill eventually gets passed in the Capitol Hill halls, then the Tennessee minimum wage would have followed that same three part increase over the course of the next two years.

The first change, to both the federal minimum wage and the Tennessee minimum wage, would have come 60 days after the president would have signed the federal minimum wage into law. That change would take the minimum wages from $5.15 per hour to $5.85 per hour. A year after that, both minimum wages would then have increased from that level of $5.85 per hour to the next level of $6.50 per hour. Go ahead another year, and the federal minimum wage and the Tennessee minimum wage would see another increase, from $6.50 per hour to $7.25 per hour. That would take us into 2009.

In the event that the federal minimum wage did not change now, or in the next five years, the Tennessee minimum wage bill had a provision built in that would increase the Tennessee minimum wage on its own—by the rate of the cost of living over the last five years.

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