Tag Archives: Economy

Democrats, GOP, Harrisburg, labor, Low Wage workers, Minimum Wage

PA. House Passes Bill To Raise The Minimum Wage

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Signs are Senate Republicans may be more open to a hike this time around.

 Photo: State Rep. Roni Green (D-Philadelphia) speaks at a rally in the Capitol rotunda on Tuesday, on raising the state’s minimum wage to $20 an hour

By: Ian Karbal 

PennCapital-Star

June 11, 2025  – The state House voted along party lines Wednesday to raise the minimum wage to $15 for most Pennsylvanians, and to $12 for those working in smaller, rural counties.

It’s a significant step in the latest effort by Democrats to get it above the federal rate of $7.25. 

Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has not been hiked since 2008 and is lower than all surrounding states — New York, Ohio, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

The measure’s sponsor, House Labor and Industry Committee chair Jason Dawkins (D-Philadelphia), said the bill is in an attempt to compromise with Republicans who have long warned about the potential impacts on businesses, especially in smaller counties with a lower cost of living.

“Since I’ve been chair, we’ve been trying to figure out a different approach to get this done,”  Dawkins told the Capital-Star. “This time around, we had a little bit more insight into where our challenges lie, one particularly being that some of our counties were worried about moving too quickly, and some were not comfortable going over $12.”

A previous bill sponsored by Dawkins passed the House in 2023, but died in the Republican-controlled Senate. And in 2019, the Senate passed a Democratic-led bill to raise it to $9.25, which died in the then-GOP-controlled House.

Dawkins’ latest bill would see the minimum wage rise gradually each year, reaching $15 in most counties on Jan. 1, 2028. It would also raise the tipped minimum wage from $2.83 to 60% of the minimum.

Counties with populations below 210,000, with the exception of Centre, Monroe and Pike counties, would only see the minimum wage rise to $12 in the same timeframe. A spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus said the three smaller counties were put in the $15 bracket at the request of Democratic members who represent them.

One exception to the gradual rise to $15 would be Philadelphia County, which Dawkins represents. There, the minimum wage would rise to $15 on January 1, 2026.

“Philadelphia has the highest population of folks who are in what we call deep poverty levels,” Dawkins said. 

He added there is particular urgency given the possibility some of those people may lose access to federal benefits like Medicaid and food assistance under a proposed bill moving through the GOP-controlled U.S. Congress.

“We wanted to have some type of safety net there because we know those folks might be losing benefits and other services,” he said.

But Dawkins’ attempt to offer an olive branch to GOP lawmakers in the form of gradual wage hike and a lower target in small counties appears to have failed in his own chamber. Every House Republican voted against the bill, and many criticized it during a two-hour debate on the floor Wednesday afternoon.

“Not every wage is designed to be a livable wage,” Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R-Bedford) “My 16-year-old son is not working for a livable wage. Someone who is retired and is helping out part-time, that is not necessarily a livable wage.”

He also warned that raising the minimum wage could result in the elimination of low wage jobs and harm small businesses in particular.

Others opposed the very provisions Dawkins said were intended to earn bipartisan support.

Rep. Kate Klunk (R-York) warned that creating different minimum wages across counties could lead to confusion for businesses that cross county lines, or encourage business owners to set up shop where the wage is lower.

“This county-based patchwork of minimum wages is going to be a mess,” Klunk said. She used examples of businesses with locations in York and Adams counties as examples, including golf courses that straddle the border between them.

“This bill is truly unworkable,” she said. “It is a compliance nightmare.”

Rep. Mike Jones (R-York) was one of few Republicans to signal openness to raising the minimum wage during debate, but said he could not support Dawkins’ bill.

“I do commend the majority chair for what I think is a good faith attempt at a reasonable compromise,” he said.

However, he added that he would want to see exceptions to the minimum wage for nonprofits and high-school aged employees.

 ‘Potential to find middle ground’

To become law, the bill will have to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said that there may be room for compromise on a minimum wage increase, especially if paired with Republican-backed deregulation efforts he said could help grow “maximum wage jobs.”

“Making sure working families have access to good, family-sustaining jobs is key to helping our commonwealth grow and thrive,” Pittman told the Capital-Star in a statement. “There is potential to finding [sic] a middle ground for an increase, but any possible action would need to be a commonsense adjustment, and sensitive to the impact changes would have on small businesses and non-profit organizations.”

Republican Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie), who has previously introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15, commended the House’s effort, but said he would not support a bill with a county-by-county approach.

“While I appreciate that the House is trying to advance the conversation, I do not support HB 1549 in its current form,” Laughlin said in an emailed statement. “A minimum wage tied to county size just deepens the economic divides we’re supposed to be addressing. If we’re going to get serious about raising the minimum wage, we need to do it uniformly across the state, not with a patchwork approach that leaves people behind based on where they live.”

Laughlin was an early Republican supporter of raising the minimum wage to $15 in Pennsylvania. But national trends may indicate more openness from members of his party this time around.

On Tuesday, conservative U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 for all Americans.

He told NBC News, “If we’re going to be a working people’s party, we have to do something for working people. And working people haven’t gotten a raise in years. So they need a raise.”

His comments reflect an openness to his party’s increasing appeal to working class voters that was made apparent in the latest general election, which saw them move away from their traditional support of Democrats.

Dawkins, the Pennsylvania bill’s sponsor, is also aware of the shift, and hopes that it will help the bill earn the support that it needs to pass.

“I’m excited by the prospects, but I’m also disappointed that there could be a federal minimum wage that’s gonna be higher than the state minimum wage — and it’s being offered by one of the most conservative members of Congress,” he joked. “But I’m hopeful it’ll help folks come around to the idea.”

“This is what I believe we got elected to do,” he added. 

Ian Karbal covers state government for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. He’s particularly interested in the influence of money in politics and how arcane policies affect Pennsylvanians across the state.

Democrats, Economy, fair trade, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, labor, Manufacturing, Pittsburgh

I’m a Rust Belt Democrat From a Swing District. Anti-Tariff Absolutism Is a Mistake.

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A black-and-white photograph of a car’s rearview mirror showing an industrial plant.
Credit…Eli Reed/Magnum Photos

By Chris Deluzio

Mr. Deluzio represents Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District.

The New York Times Op-Ed

March 7, 2025 – Democrats have wasted no time rejecting President Trump’s tariffs as “damaging” and “unnecessary.” My colleagues have lampooned them as “irresponsible,” “bad economics” and purely a tax on consumers. This anti-tariff absolutism is a mistake.

I’m a Rust Belt Democrat from a swing district in Western Pennsylvania — where lousy trade deals like NAFTA stripped us for parts.

Many of my constituents support smart tariffs, particularly ones that target China, and so do I. Watching my colleagues on the Hill, it’s clear we’re missing the mark. Democrats need to break free from the wrong-for-decades zombie horde of neoliberal economists who think tariffs are always bad.

Mr. Trump’s tariff approach has been chaotic and inconsistent. There’s no doubt about that. But the answer isn’t to condemn tariffs across the board. That risks putting the Democrats even further out of touch with the hard-working people who used to be the lifeblood of the party — people like my constituents.

https://38d3c177773902903b82d2899b5af789.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-41/html/container.html

Instead, Democrats should embrace tariffs as one component of a broader industrial strategy to revitalize American manufacturing and make whole communities that have been hollowed out by decades of bad trade policy. This isn’t just about making the economy work for more Americans; it’s also about earning back the trust and faith of the people we need to win elections and who ought to be at the heart of the Democratic Party.

Since the 1990s, presidents from both parties pushed trade agreements that were great for corporate bosses and their Wall Street overlords, but a disaster for districts like mine. American companies offshored production to take advantage of cheap labor in countries like Mexico, which for decades have crushed independent unions to keep wages rock bottom. Later, firms shifted production to China and Vietnam, which are often called out for employing beggar-thy-neighbor tactics like wage suppression, enormous subsidies and currency manipulation to jack up their exports.

For too long, we absorbed these unfair imports and created a chronic trade deficit that deindustrialized our nation and fueled income inequality. In 2004, the grandfather of modern trade economics, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, revealed how offshoring could cost American workers more in relative wages than they gained from cheaper imported goods, making the current trade regime a bad deal for most Americans.

Tariffs are one of a few tools that can break this cycle: They force mercantilist countries to increase their domestic consumption of what they produce because they can no longer dump it in the United States. Increasingly, policymakers — of all political stripes — recognize that tariffs can help protect industries that are key to our economic and national security, boost American production and wages, and safeguard workers’ rights as well as our air and water by incentivizing firms to raise their labor and environmental standards.

If you oppose all tariffs, you are essentially signaling that you are comfortable with exploited foreign workers making your stuff at the expense of American workers. I am not and neither are most voters. Many polls show that Americans — especially the three-fifths without college degrees — support tariffs in part, economists have suggested, because communities harmed by global competition view them “as a sign of political solidarity.” The Biden administration, to its credit, tripled tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. So, why is the Democrats’ only message on tariffs that they raise prices? That was the play during the 2024 election and it flopped. Just last month, a CBS poll found that a majority of Americans one, thought Mr. Trump was not focused enough on lowering prices, two, believed that tariffs could increase prices and three, still wanted tariffs on China.

Rather than reflexively condemning all tariffs, Democrats should be highlighting how Mr. Trump’s scattershot threats, unanchored to any real industrial strategy, will not deliver on the goals of rebuilding American manufacturing, raising wages or rebalancing trade.

For one thing, tariffs are effective only when used in a predictable and stable way — and the Trump administration’s approach has been anything but. On Feb. 1, Mr. Trump announced he was imposing new 10 percent tariffs on China and fixing part of a trade scam that allows four million packages to enter the United States daily without facing tariffs, taxes or meaningful inspection — simply because they’re labeled “low value.” Not only does this “de minimis” loophole undermine U.S. producers and retailers, but traffickers also often exploit it to sneak in deadly fentanyl-laced pills and fentanyl precursor chemicals. Days after his announcement, Mr. Trump flip-flopped and reopened the loophole. He raised China tariffs another 10 percent on March 4 — good! But still, the loophole means billions in Chinese imports can evade tariffs and inspections.

Mr. Trump’s chaotic tariff two-step — imposing, delaying, threatening and then again imposing tariffs, including on allies like Canada with whom we mainly have balanced trade — is bad business for America. Entrepreneurs ready to invest in production here sit on the sidelines, wondering where the tariff roller coaster will stop. (Continued)

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Economy, fair trade, Green Jobs, labor, Manufacturing, Steelworkers
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On Why the USW, Biden and Trump are Right about the Nippon/USSteel Ripoff

By Ike Gittlen

https://ikegittlen.substack.com/

For months the proposed sale of USSteel to Nippon Steel has been front page news. The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), that reviews the national security implications of these global transactions is reportedly at an impasse and unable to come to a determination.

The reality is that what CFIUS decides (or doesn’t) is irrelevant. Both the incumbent President and the President-elect have said they will not approve the deal. It’s slowly dawning on people that this deal isn’t likely to happen.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Opposing the Nippon/USSteel deal is the logical response to all that we have learned about the steel industry, the “free trade” model of global trade, the importance of maintaining domestic control over critical supply chains and how the big money vultures strip-mine our stable industrial/manufacturing enterprises. It isn’t, as Nippon/USSteel would like us to believe, something that must happen or USSteel will collapse. Once this bad deal is gone, we know there are a number of options to retain and enhance USSteel’s assets.

To understand what’s happening we have to start with the global steel overcapacity. The OECD reports a global steel overcapacity exceeding 500 million metric tons, with some estimates reaching as high as 630 million metric tons. This has nations with overcapacity (China in the lead) looking for places to dump their steel production. Our nation is a lucrative place to offload unneeded steel. Interestingly, Nippon is reportedly looking to do deals in other nations with lucrative steel consumption, as the USSteel deal falters.

It’s fantasy to believe that once Nippon owns USSteel it won’t use it to move its overcapacity here. Simply look at the cases that the USW and the Steel Industry have won at the International Trade Commission, to get a flavor of how blatant other nations have violated our trade laws to gain access our steel market. The failure of Nippon to offer credible and enforceable commitments to continue American domestic production, should convince us of their real intent. This is the heart of the national security concern. That if Nippon is allowed to own such a large part of American steel capacity, the will result will be steel shutdowns here and less ability to supply our own needs of this critical economic sector.

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