Word: wage
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...1980s the minimum wage has really lived up to its name. Since it was last raised to $3.35 an hour in 1981, inflation has eroded its purchasing power by 27%. Meanwhile, the Reagan era became famous for skyrocketing maximum wages as greed became fashionable throughout the land. Frustrated by Congress's repeated failures to improve the national standard for the lowest- paid employees, eleven states set higher minimums of their own. Even fast- food chains often find themselves bidding $6 an hour and up for workers who scoff at the minimum wage as "chump change...
...followed by a raise to $4.25 a year later. That represents a concession by the President, who wanted the increase phased in over three years. But congressional Democrats also gave ground by agreeing to an idea they had fiercely resisted in the past, a so- called training wage for teenage workers. The training wage, which can be paid to a worker only during his first six months on the job, will be $3.23, rising...
...nine-year logjam on the minimum wage is finally broken," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54-'56 (D-Mass.), a key architect of the compromise. "The working poor are about to receive an increase, although it is not as much as they deserve...
...debt of gratitude to the president of the United States, who was willing to stand up and support a minimum wage increase, thereby reversing the policy of the prior administration, which had consistently opposed any increase," said Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine...
...minimum wage, frozen at $3.35 an hour since January 1981, is paid to about four million American workers. But the legislation likely will have a broader impact by driving up the wages of workers who now make slightly more than the minimum wage, particularly those covered by collective bargaining agreements...