Paul DeCamp Quoted in “Midterm Primary Democrats Push Minimum Wage Hike”

As the U.S. Senate and House midterm primaries enter their busiest month, Democratic candidates have made increasing the federal minimum wage a campaign issue, while efforts in the current Congress have stalled.

In June, midterm primaries or runoffs will take place in 22 states. More than two dozen candidates with upcoming or previous races have campaigned on platforms calling for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour, where it has been since 2009.

The primaries are happening as current lawmakers' efforts to raise the federal wage floor appear stuck. The Raise the Wage Act, which called for an increase to $15 an hour, hasn't advanced since lawmakers introduced it in January 2021, and Democrats' attempts to include a $15 provision in a COVID-19 relief package and an infrastructure bill failed.

President Joe Biden has continued advocating for a $15 hourly wage floor, including in his March State of the Union speech, and he has signed executive orders paving the way for such pay bumps for federal employees and federal contract workers. …

Here, Law360 looks at how the minimum wage debate has appeared in the midterm primaries.

Mixed Results For Pro-Hike Candidates

In midterm primaries that have already taken place, some Democratic candidates who advocated for raising the federal minimum wage have won, while others have lost. In some instances, those losses were to candidates who did not appear to mention minimum wage in their platforms. …

Paul DeCamp of management-side firm Epstein Becker Green, who led the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division under President George W. Bush, said differences between primary candidates typically are minimal.

"At the primary stage, when you have people in the same party competing against each other, you're not necessarily going to see wildly differing views on these topics," DeCamp said. "I don't think that anybody who lost a primary on the Democratic side lost because of their position on minimum wage." …

Uncertainty In Current Senate

Given the lack of movement on the Raise the Wage Act, and failed efforts to work minimum wage into other legislation, it seems unlikely that the current Congress will bump the wage floor before its session expires, observers said.

Republican opponents of the wage hike have pointed to a Congressional Budget Office report from February 2021 that said an increase to $15 an hour would result in 1.4 million people losing jobs by 2025, even as millions of other workers would see pay bumps.

"A $15 minimum wage at the federal level in this Congress is exceedingly unlikely," said Epstein Becker Green's DeCamp. "The politics of the moment appear to call for candidates to fight about $15 rather than compromising at, say, $10 or $12."

If the increase doesn't happen in this Democrat-controlled Congress, eyes will be on whether Republicans take control of either or both chambers in the midterms.

Of the nine times that Congress has amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to raise minimum wage, Democrats controlled both chambers except once, in 1996, during the Bill Clinton administration. In that instance, Republicans controlled both chambers. …
 
But DeCamp said there could potentially be more movement on the issue under Republicans because the $15 figure would be off the table.

"There is a significant number of Republican legislators who seem willing, with the backing of the business community, to agree to some increase in the federal minimum wage," DeCamp said.