Last week, Republicans in the House of Delegates passed a bill to exempt any business with 10 or fewer employees from the state’s minimum wage law.
On Monday, Democrats in the Senate voted it down alongside a half dozen other bills aimed at rolling back employee and union-friendly legislation the party passed last year before it lost its House majority.
“So they would be exempt from the current minimum wage? … Just out of curiosity, where in the state can you live on $14,000 a year?” asked Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax.
Virginia’s minimum wage currently sits at $11 an hour and will rise to $12 an hour next year under legislation Democrats passed in 2020.
The $14,000 figure cited by Saslaw represents about what someone would earn working full-time for the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25-an-hour, which is what small businesses could start paying their employees again if the bill were to pass.
The measure’s sponsor, Del. Phillip Scott, R-Spotsylvania, argued the legislation would help children and disabled people get jobs at small businesses that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to hire them.
“This would not be aimed at a providing parent,” he said. “This would be geared more toward summer help.”
Scott also floated a scenario in which someone with Down’s syndrome might “just want to get a job sweeping floors at a local coffee shop” but could lose out on state benefits if they were paid at the state’s minimum wage.
But while Scott framed the...
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