By Norman Bell, Hartford Business Journal Contributor
The culmination of Connecticut’s five-year march to a $15-an-hour minimum wage should have been a moment of celebration in the nonprofit community.
Instead, reaching the milestone June 1 has become a bittersweet reminder of the perils of long-term strategies and the fragility of the nonprofit community itself.
Nonprofits are “straining” with a child-care crisis looming, said Glenn Dowd, a partner with Day Pitney whose employment law practice includes several nonprofits.
Program cuts, longer wait times, administrative changes including possible layoffs and benefit cuts, even wholesale mergers of smaller nonprofits all are on the table, said Mary Kay Curtiss, principal with CliftonLarsonAllen, whose accounting practice focuses on nonprofit clients.
Back in 2017, when the legislature agreed to the gradual movement of the hourly minimum wage upward from $10.10, it seemed a progressive triumph that promised a better life for thousands of low-income Connecticut families.
But a lot has changed across those years — the COVID pandemic, economic shutdown, massive layoffs, government-relief efforts, the rise of remote work, the Great Resignation, unprecedented political divisions, supply chain problems and disruptive inflation.
The $30,000-a-year income that not long ago seemed like a living wage is no longer viable. Major employers like Walmart and McDonald’s have blown past the minimum wage in their search for workers.
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