Oregon lawmakers approve landmark minimum wage increase

OR lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to a measure that will increase the state’s minimum wage over the next six years.

The bill will raise the Portland area’s minimum wage to $14.75.

Those minimums dethrone MA – where the statewide rate will climb to $11 an hour next year – from the top spot, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a D.C.-based think tank that tracks wage laws across the nation.

The Senate passed the minimum wage bill last week 16-12, with Democratic Sen. It will now head to Governor Kate Brown’s desk for her signature.

OR is unique because it would be the first state without a one-size-fits-all statewide minimum for all workers.

OR now joins 14 other states that have raised their rates over the past two years.

The Oregon plan follows moves in states such as Massachusetts, California and Vermont that recently boosted statewide minimums above $10.

The increase is actually said to be an attempt to prevent unions, businesses, and farmers from bringing more aggressive proposals before voters in November by reaching a compromise through this bill.

OR is taking a new approach.

Exciting times (in minimum wage law)!

“Families in OR are facing emergencies every day due to our low minimum wage”, said House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland.

Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, worked with other House lawmakers to try to come up with an alternative proposal that would have tied the minimum wage to the median wages of cities and counties across Oregon. The problem: Coming up with that much money. Crook and Jefferson County minimum wage earners would get a 25-cent-an-hour raise this July, and those in Deschutes would get 50 cents an hour more.

The division in the increase is a reflection of the cost of living in the rural versus urban communities of OR, with urban areas like Portland having seen soaring costs while rural farming communities are said to be struggling just to make ends meet.

“This bill raises the wage too slowly, and it leaves working families outside Portland even further behind”, said the group’s organizer, Justin Norton-Kertson.

The bill will increase wages gradually over six years.

“Anytime you create these sorts of somewhat arbitrary geographic districts, that’s when you can create opportunities for some sort of economic disruption. would prefer the whole state got to the same wage level but at a slower pace by region so that everyone is held to the same standard.”