Minimum Wage

Nearly 500 restaurant employees were underpaid by $1.3 million at 34 Boston-area restaurants, including Not Your Average Joe's, Miracle of Science, Metropolitan Club, and Fresh City, according to the US Department of Labor, which conducted investigations over the past two years. The agency said it discovered significant violations of the minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. For example, the Not Your Average Joe's chain owed workers more than $568,000 for violations at 15 restaurants.

Senate Democrats said Thursday they plan to resurrect a failed bipartisan job creation bill that died in the House of Representatives during the final day of the legislative session. Senate President Donald Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, said he believes components of Senate Bill 1, one of the Senate Democrats' top priorities for the three-month session, can be woven into the remaining budget-related bills that lawmakers plan to approve during a special session. The legislators are looking at a possible session on June 25. Williams said he was puzzled over why the bill wasn't called...

WASHINGTON -- Democrats will seek Republican help to raise the minimum wage, cut taxes for working families, and make health care and college more affordable, incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid said yesterday. "We intend to reach out to President Bush and our Republican colleagues in Congress," the Nevada lawmaker said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "The last four years . . . have shown that a political party in Congress acting alone can accomplish nothing. " Bush has signaled his readiness to consider a federal minimum-wage increase and to find compromise on...

Connecticut lawmakers closed out a legislative session on Wednesday that finally resolved some perennial issues at the state Capitol, with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy crediting them with making "positive, meaningful change. " Over the past three months, the Democratic-controlled General Assembly has voted to legalize medical marijuana for adults, abolish the death penalty for future crimes and allow the retail sale of alcohol on Sundays. Lawmakers also approved an education overhaul bill that backers say stands a better chance than past efforts at closing the state's achievement gap between rich...

WASHINGTON -- Two of the top goals of Democrat lawmakers -- a higher minimum wage and federal funding of embryonic stem cell research -- enjoy broad public support as the party takes control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents also support making it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from other countries, an Associated Press-AOL News poll found . By a smaller margin, survey respondents also said they favor relaxing restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a third issue...

AUGUSTA, Maine -- Surrounded by the bill's supporters, Governor John Baldacci signed into law yesterday a measure to raise Maine's minimum wage to $7 an hour by October 2007, declaring that it will keep the state on a pace with the rest of New England. The Democratic governor said the two-step increase will make Maine's minimum wage into a "living wage" for those who struggle with one or more jobs to make ends meet. The Legislature earlier this week gave its final approval to the bill, which nudges the minimum up from the current $6.50 an hour to $6.75 in...

Germany media say Chancellor Angela Merkel's party is exploring the idea of a minimum wage for workers, abandoning its previous opposition to such a policy. Merkel's Christian Democrats are debating a proposal for a minimum wage ahead of a November party congress, the dapd new agency reported Sunday. Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung "it is no longer a question of whether we will have a minimum wage, but how we will agree to the right amount.

NEW YORK -- More than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, yesterday called for an increase in the minimum wage, saying the value of the last increase, in 1997, has been "fully eroded. " Economists including Nobel prize winners Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University, and Clive Granger of the University of California, San Diego said in a statement released yesterday that the real value of today's federal minimum...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced plans to increase his country's minimum wage. Chavez says the minimum wage will increase 15 percent in May and an additional 15 percent in September. The increase has been expected given Venezuela's soaring inflation, which currently stands at about 25 percent. The leftist president's government has raised the minimum wage between 20 percent and 30 percent each year during the past decade. Chavez made the announcement as he prepared to return to Cuba late Saturday for his next round of cancer treatment.

ATLANTA - A federal minimum wage increase that takes effect today could prolong the recession, some economists say, by forcing small businesses to lay off the same workers that the pay hike was meant to help. The increase to $7.25 means 70 cents more an hour for the lowest-paid workers in the 30 states that have lower minimums or no minimum wage. It also means higher costs for employers who feel they’ve already trimmed all their operating fat. “How will they absorb the increase?

At least 8,000 workers have marched in the Philippine capital to demand an increase in the country's minimum daily wage. Philippine President Benigno Aquino III rejected the May Day pleas for a $3 daily pay hike, saying it would worsen inflation, spark layoffs and turn away foreign investors. Manila police chief Alex Gutierrez says about 8,000 members of a huge labor alliance marched for four kilometers (2.5 miles) Tuesday to the heavily barricaded Mendiola bridge near the presidential palace.

Connecticut advocates in favor of raising the state's minimum wage will be delivering more than 3,000 petition signatures to the state legislature in favor of such legislation. Members of Hartford Catholic Workers, Mothers for Justice, Connecticut Working Families and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Friday will speak in favor of the bill passed Thursday by the House of Representatives. Prior to the event, they will deliver the signatures. The bill, proposes raising the hourly wage from $8.25 to $8.50 effective Jan. 1, 2013, and to $8.75 on Jan. 1,...

Massachusetts investigators nearly doubled the amount of money collected last year from employers caught violating the state's minimum wage and tax laws, reflecting exploitation of workers in a range of industries, according to a new report. The state's task force on the so-called underground economy recovered nearly $11 million in fines, back taxes, and unpaid wages from employers in 2011, up from $6.5 million in 2010 and $1.4 million in 2009. The sharp increase, recorded in the task force's annual report to be released Thursday, offers a window into widespread efforts to subvert wage and tax...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced plans to increase his country's minimum wage. Chavez says the minimum wage will increase 15 percent in May and an additional 15 percent in September. The increase has been expected given Venezuela's soaring inflation, which currently stands at about 25 percent. The leftist president's government has raised the minimum wage between 20 percent and 30 percent each year during the past decade. Chavez made the announcement as he prepared to return to Cuba late Saturday for his next round of cancer treatment.

A pledge by the manufacturer of Apple's iPhones and iPads to limit work hours at its factories in China could force other global corporations to hike pay for Chinese workers who produce the world's consumer electronics, toys and other goods. Foxconn Technology's promise comes as Beijing is pushing foreign companies to share more of their revenues with Chinese employees. It follows a report by a labor auditor hired by Apple Inc. that found Foxconn was regularly violating legal limits on overtime, with factory employees working more than 60 hours per week.

More than $1.3 million in back wages are owed to nearly 500 restaurant employees at 34 popular local restaurants, including 15 Not Your Average Joe's locations, six Science Partners restaurants in Cambridge and Boston, four Fresh City eateries, and three Metropolitan Club restaurants, according to an ongoing enforcement initiative conducted by the US Department of Labor. The federal agency said its investigations, conducted over the past year and a half, uncovered significant violations of the minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping provisions of the...

Connecticut advocates in favor of raising the state's minimum wage will be delivering more than 3,000 petition signatures to the state legislature in favor of such legislation. Members of Hartford Catholic Workers, Mothers for Justice, Connecticut Working Families and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Friday will speak in favor of the bill passed Thursday by the House of Representatives. Prior to the event, they will deliver the signatures. The bill, proposes raising the hourly wage from $8.25 to $8.50 effective Jan. 1, 2013, and to $8.75 on Jan. 1, 2014.

State Treasurer Steven Grossman expressed support Tuesday for proposals to raise the Massachusetts minimum wage and to force businesses to offer paid sick leave, issues that have riled the business community and recently won legislative committee endorsements on Beacon Hill. Grossman emphasized that he supports the policies "in principle" and might quibble with the specifics, adding that he would leave it to the Legislature to determine how high to raise the minimum wage, over what period to phase in an increase, and the appropriate number of paid sick days for Bay...

Nearly 500 restaurant employees were underpaid by $1.3 million at 34 Boston-area restaurants, including Not Your Average Joe's, Miracle of Science, Metropolitan Club, and Fresh City, according to the US Department of Labor, which conducted investigations over the past two years. The agency said it discovered significant violations of the minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. For example, the Not Your Average Joe's chain owed workers more than $568,000 for violations at 15 restaurants.

State Treasurer Steven Grossman expressed support Tuesday for proposals to raise the Massachusetts minimum wage and to force businesses to offer paid sick leave, issues that have riled the business community and recently won legislative committee endorsements on Beacon Hill. Grossman emphasized that he supports the policies "in principle" and might quibble with the specifics, adding that he would leave it to the Legislature to determine how high to raise the minimum wage, over what period to phase in an increase, and the appropriate number of paid sick...