Editorial: An ‘unlivable’ wage

Thursday, May 5, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

One of the most basic needs that an adult has is achieving economic security -- and that means finding a steady job with a livable wage and health insurance benefits. Last year Nevada voters, by an overwhelming margin, demonstrated that they believed the state's existing minimum wage was dreadfully low. More than 68 percent of Nevada voters approved a constitutional amendment that would immediately boost the state minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15 an hour and link future increases to the rate of inflation. But, because a change in the Constitution requires two affirmative votes in successive elections, the earliest the minimum wage increase could go into effect would be sometime after the 2006 election in November.

Assembly Democrats, acknowledging that this is far too long to wait, decided at the outset of the 2005 Legislature to push for a change in Nevada law so that the minimum wage increase would go into effect this year. Although the Assembly has passed the measure, there is resistance to it in the Republican-controlled Senate, where it currently is in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee.

Every senator who has even the slightest inclination to vote against this reasonable proposal should stop and think of Kendall Earl. The mother of four children, Earl testified before the Commerce and Labor Committee on Tuesday that she is having difficulty paying bills on her minimum-wage salary as a waitress in Reno. Her family, because of the lack of income, is on the state's Medicaid program, which provides medical care for the poor. Earl, and thousands of other Nevadans in a similar situation, shouldn't have to go through this. In a state as rich and prosperous as ours, it is unconscionable that Nevada's minimum wage is so shamefully low. The Senate should avoid pandering to those businesses that oppose an increase and pass this legislation immediately.