Report Title:

Minimum Wage

 

Description:

Increases the State minimum wage by $1 above the prevailing federal minimum wage.

 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

H.B. NO.

102

TWENTY-FIRST LEGISLATURE, 2001

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

RELATING TO MINIMUM WAGES.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

 

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that the State's current minimum wage of $5.25 per hour is deplorably inadequate. The minimum hourly wage earned by a parent or caregiver directly affects the level of care, maintenance, education, and support that they can provide to their children. Any deficiency in the basic components in a child's development could have far-reaching consequences. Increasing the minimum hourly wage paid to employees not only reduces the welfare rolls, increases the tax base, and stimulates the local consumer economy; more significantly, it strengthens the economic foundation of the family unit, which enables parents to nurture their children. Hawaii's future is dependent on its children being healthy, educated, and motivated to face the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Based on available statistics, approximately three-and-a-half per cent of Hawaii's workforce, or nineteen thousand four hundred twenty employees, are minimum wage workers. There are over eighty thousand children in the Temporary Assistance Benefit To Needy Families program, Temporary Assistance Benefit To Other Needy Families program, and the Food Stamp program. The average hourly wage for adult workers in these public assistance benefit programs is $8 per hour, which is substantially above the State's existing minimum wage of $5.25 per hour.

The adverse effect of the consumer's diminishing purchasing power caused by yearly cost-of-living inflation is even more devastating to low-end wage earners in Hawaii, because Hawaii has a cost of living substantially higher than the national average. The erosion of purchasing power exacerbates the already dire financial conditions that many families are presently experiencing. The resulting physical and psychological deprivation to children can profoundly influence the resolve of parents to be contributing members of society and not a drain on the State's limited resources.

The purpose of this Act is to increase the state minimum wage to not less than $1 over the prevailing federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is currently $5.15 per hour.

SECTION 2. Section 387-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:

"§387-2 Minimum wages. Except as provided in section 387-9 and this section, every employer shall pay to each employee employed by the employer wages at the rate of not less than [$3.85 per hour beginning January 1, 1988, $4.75 per hour beginning April 1, 1992, and] $5.25 per hour beginning January 1, 1993[.], and not less than $1 per hour greater than the prevailing federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, beginning . The hourly wage of a tipped employee may be deemed to be increased on account of tips if the employee is paid not less than twenty cents below the applicable minimum wage by the employee's employer and the combined amount the employee receives from the employee's employer and in tips is at least fifty cents more than the applicable minimum wage."

SECTION 3. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

INTRODUCED BY: