Businesses that ring up less than $500,000 a year in sales and prevent their products or services from stretching across state lines can continue to keep their payrolls unchanged today.
A rise in the federal minimum wage doesn't directly affect them.
But for everyone else - the bulk of businesses in the state, save a relative handful of small, mom-and-pop restaurants and otherwise limited, independent shops - today marks the implementation of a new minimum wage of $5.85 an hour.
The 70-cent boost, the first in a decade, applies to all workers in businesses that fall under the auspices of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
Linda Wichman, a labor conciliator for the Kansas Department of Labor, said businesses that don't need to pay the new federal minimum wage - such as the aforementioned mom-and-pops - still needed to pay at least $2.65 an hour, the longtime state minimum wage that continues to rank as the lowest in the country.
Wichman and others who track wage information were hard-pressed to come up with a total number of employees in Kansas who might earn wages at or below the federal minimum wage, new or old. But the 2000 Census showed that 3.5 percent of full-time workers in Lawrence were earning pay at less than the $5.15 minimum wage.
Today's presumption: Even fewer full-timers are toiling for the state minimum.
"I don't know too many people who would work for $2.65," Wichman said.
Kansas lawmakers considered, but failed to approve, a bill earlier this year that would have increased the state minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage, enacted in 1938, had its last increase in September 1997, when President Clinton signed a bill boosting the wage by 40 cents an hour to $5.15.
The latest legislation, approved by President Bush in May, bumps up the wage by 70 cents an hour each summer until 2009, when the federal rate would settle at $7.25 an hour.
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Dayna38 (Dayna Lee) says…
I guess the Outhouse is really the only business affected in Lawrence.
leadrain (anonymous) says…
Employers- have no fear. If they go ahead and make the illegals legal. The minimum wage should drop back down. Of course so will our Social Security benefits and medical expenses will go up. As for us worrying about the minimum wage-Want more $$$$$? Go to school and get a better job.
SettingTheRecordStraight (anonymous) says…
This is a sad day for America's working poor. Any minimum wage, especially the arbitrarily high one that goes into effect today, pushes more people out of employment than it helps.
The minimum wage that helps the most low-income workers: $0.00 per hour.
gccs14r (anonymous) says…
Middle class purchasing power peaked in 1973 and the minimum wage in effect at the time permitted one to afford a basic shelter and put food on the table. The middle class has been in decline since then as modern-day robber barons send our manufacturing jobs overseas and inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage. $885 a month is not enough. $1247 is better. Unless and until we wrest control of our currency from the private banking cabal that has it, we'll continue to need to increase the minimum wage to account for the artificial inflation inflicted upon us by the Fed.
purplesage (anonymous) says…
I don't know about the couple of diverse theories put forth above. I do know that milk is $4.00 a gallon in many stores and that gasoline is hovering around $3.00 a gallon. I suspect there's an relationship between those two figures as the price of all heavy, bulky things has jumped of late.
It ought to be an embarrassment to an employer to ask employees for the hours of their days for this kind of money. I was looking for work many years ago and the man to whom I applied quoted a figure for the starting wage and then remarked, "The last two have started at (a higher figure) and they haven't stayed around so I've decided it will start at ????" (I don't remember the numbers). He didn't get it; his last two were so woefully underpaid that they likely had to leave. So make it less???
Tell me how a businessman can go home to an upscale neighborhood at night knowing that his underpaid, uninsured employees can't pay their bills and couldn't afford a doctor if they needed one?
domino (anonymous) says…
"I don't know too many people who would work for $2.65 an hour"
Get real! Lots of servers and waitstaff people get paid that. What they actually "work for" is the tips. Often, employees turn in a daily or weekly sheet showing what they made in tips and that is the only record the employer has. Employee turns in enough tips to show that they are making minimum wage, pay taxes on that amount and the rest is cash in their pocket - un-taxed! As long as all the servers at an establishment show making about the same amount (minimum wage) it doesn't throw up any flags and they are never checked. Happens all the time!
crazyks (anonymous) says…
The opposite is also true, domino...
The IRS assumes that all waitpersons receive the same amount in tips over a certain time period, based on somebody's misguided formula. Whether they do or not doesn't seem to matter.
If they state that they received fewer tips than that, the IRS also assumes they're lying...whether they are or not. I knew a girl once who wasn't allowed to claim less than a certain amount for tips, even though she wasn't always making that much. So, in her case, she ended up paying taxes on money she didn't even get.
I personally wish they would just do away with tips completely. I'd rather they would pay the waitpersons a living wage, and I'll gladly pay more for my meals.
smitty (anonymous) says…
An increase of 70 cents oer hour is $28 per week before taxes or $1456 per year assuming a 40 hour week. This increase still does not equal the federal poverty level. Our minimun wage policy is nothing less than another form of slavery.
SettingTheRecordStraight (anonymous) says…
Smitty,
That we have a government that even thinks it has the right to tell the free markets what it must pay workers is slavery.
shorttrees (anonymous) says…
The minimum wage for tipped employees was $2.13 an hour before this wage increase, and will actually increase to the whopping sum of $2.34 an hour now, with an eventual rate of $2.90 in 2009. A little known provision of the wage law allows a "tip credit" of 60% (currently) of the federal minimum wage, which means that the assumption is an employee will make up the rest of their hourly minimum in tips. The employer is supposed to make up any shortfall in tips during the pay period to ensure the employee is paid the minimum, but this often does not happen.
The IRS figures an "allocation" of 8% of sales to be the tips received by an employee--this means that if the employee sold $500 worth of food/drinks in a shift (or 35 diners/drinkers spending an average of around $15 each, fairly busy shift) the IRS expects to receive taxes on $40 in tips. All it takes is a few non-tippers or poor tippers (such as the $1 each types) and the IRS is taxing on money not made. Good luck with the boss, they'll average it out over the pay period and tell you to get over it, work harder, whatever. That's why Restaurants are now so picky about each employee's shift sales, guest counts, tip reports, etc.
Plus it's rarely mentioned how many other people (depending on establishment) get "tipped out" by the server, i.e. a cut of their tips goes to the hostess/maitre d', bussers, bartender, and even kitchen employees. 10-15% of the servers tips are often gone, or even a percentage of their sales such as 2%. So if the server had a good night and made 15% of $500 sales--$75, then they are out $10-$15 of that before they walk out the door. On a bad night averaging tips of 10% of sales the server loses around $10 dollars and walks out with the IRS assumed $40. It usually works out to a decent hourly if you are good at it and really bust butt, and the establishment does good business. But it is HARD work, often working many hours without any break or chance to sit down anywhere but the toilet! Then of course is "sidework time" which is all the other work done at $2.13-$2.34 an hour such as cleaning, stocking, vacuuming, mopping, etc. which can bring down the hourly average quite a bit.