Bad news for minimum wage earners in Colorado. As of January 1st, the minimum wage went down. WTF, right??? It’s the only state in the Union where this has happened since the minimum wage law was established in 1938!
Apparently, the Colorado voters in their infinite wisdom, voted for the minimum wage to be tied to Consumer Price Index. Make sense. Problem is, I guess they never thought that it might go down. So, starting January 1st, the Colorado minimum wage went from $7.28 an hour to $7.25. That could add up to around $600.00 for a full time employee over the course of a year.
The one ray of light is that even though the law lowers the minimum wage, employers aren’t required to do so.
Ironically, one special interest group that helped get the measure passed, FRESC: Good Jobs, Strong Communities, is urging employers not to lower worker’s wages as a result of the change.
Just my .02, but this Amendment 42 doesn’t seem all that well thought out. Doesn’t seem like it’d take a team of brain surgeons to figure out that if you tie minimum wage to the economy, and the economy is in the commode, the minimum wage is going to follow. Exactly at the time when people need better wages. All it would have taken was a small tweak to fix this. I just wonder if they even thought about it.
Read more at The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction.
Tue, Jan 5, 2010
Employment and Labor Law, Legal News