As expected, Senate supporters of the Minimum Wage Fairness Act (S. 2223) failed to garner the 60 votes needed to bring the measure to a floor vote without the threat of a filibuster. The legislation – which would have raised the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour in increments over a three-year period and indexed future increases to inflation – was considered a symbolic component of President Obama's "Opportunity for All" agenda laid out in his Statute of the Union Address. The motion to invoke cloture on the Minimum Wage Fairness Act failed by a vote of 54-42.
Likely knowing that a federal minimum wage bill would not advance in this divided Congress, the President has taken executive action in recent months to implement pay changes, including issuing an Executive Order raising the minimum wage for certain federal contractors and directing the Department of Labor to revise its overtime exemptions for white collar employees. Now that David Weil has been confirmed as the new Administrator of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division, the agency will have a wage equity advocate at the helm. During a DOL conference call conducted on April 29 to promote increasing the minimum wage, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said that Weil will be tasked with revising the overtime regulations per the President's Executive Order, administering the recent changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage and overtime rules for home care workers, and focusing on the many WHD employee misclassification initiatives. It is likely the DOL will continue to focus on wage equity this election year, as it has even established a webpage dedicated to raising the minimum wage.
While the Minimum Wage Fairness Act is effectively dead this year, do not expect the issue to disappear.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.