State House News Service

The $15 minimum wage that took effect Jan. 1 in Massachusetts was years in the making. Now, with the new rate just setting in, a coalition has set its sights on making Massachusetts the first state in the country to move to $20 an hour.

Members of the Raise Up Coalition, an influential constellation of organized labor and community groups, will press lawmakers to support legislation proposing four annual minimum wage hikes to bring the standard rate up to $20 by 2027, while nearly doubling the separate minimum wage for tipped workers to $12 an hour.

The proposal, which has already generated opposition from at least one industry group, will spark new debate about an appropriate wage floor and impacts on businesses. That discussion is likely to be supercharged by the high cost of living in the Bay State, lingering pandemic-era strains on workers and employers, and a menu of tax relief measures business leaders say are important to the state's competitiveness.

"In 2018, when we passed the law to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, I think even then we knew $15 an hour would certainly help a lot of lower-income families and households in Massachusetts, but that that would still be below what's really needed for a living wage," state Sen. Jason Lewis, who filed a version of the $20-an-hour bill, said. "The impact of unexpectedly high inflation in the last couple of years that has really eaten away at the purchasing power of a $15 minimum wage."

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