Hardly anyone in Denver makes just the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour anymore.
But even at $7.25, workers such as Yasmin Hernandez, 20, a housekeeper at the Oxford Hotel, struggle to make ends meet.
“I wish I can make $10 per hour because I need the money,” Hernandez said Thursday.
Hernandez, speaking Spanish with her words translated by a work supervisor, lives with three other roommates in an apartment in Denver. Working 35 hours a week, she has gross pay of about $1,100 a month.
She said “all the money is for the bills.” That’s $350 a month for rent, $100 a month on food and $100 a month on clothes. She said she tries to send $200 a month to her family in Guatemala, including her 3-year-old son.
Workers such as Hernandez are at the center of a debate about raising the minimum wage and the ripple effects it would have on employees, employers and the overall economy.
On Thursday, about 50 supporters of a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in Colorado from $5.15 to $6.85 rallied on the statehouse steps, then carried boxes containing 130,017 signatures to the secretary of state’s office three blocks away. The number of certified signatures needed to put the issue on the November ballot is 68,000.
“It’s really hard when you’re working at minimum wage. You have to select which bills are more important to pay each month. You have to stagger your payments,” said De Phillips of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that helped collect the signatures.
The federally mandated minimum wage hasn’t changed since 1997. About half the states, including Colorado, follow the federal lead. A bill in Congress, which could have raised the wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 by June 1, 2009, failed to advance Thursday in the Senate and appears dead for this session. Democrats and labor unions hope to make the minimum wage a wedge issue in November’s midterm elections.
Colorado’s initiative would index a proposed $6.85-an-hour minimum wage to the state Consumer Price Index in future years, leading to a wage that could jump to $7 and beyond.
The state initiative is opposed by the Denver Chamber of Commerce, which represents nearly 3,000 area businesses.
“Because the proposition would require an annual increase based on the Colorado CPI, on an annual basis, there would be a mandatory salary increase,” said Tamra Ward, vice president of public affairs for the chamber.
“If it’s a down economy, it may be more difficult to provide that salary increase. It should be the decision of the business, not a mandate by the government.”
An estimated 34,000 Colorado workers – about 1.5 percent of the workforce – were paid the minimum wage in 2005, according to the Colorado legislative council research. About 106,000 workers – just under 5 percent of the workforce – were paid less than $6.85 an hour.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who owns a number of bars and restaurants in Denver controlled through a blind trust, said he supports the minimum-wage proposal.
Staff writer Beth Potter can be reached at 303-820-1503 or bpotter@denverpost.com.
