By Megan Woolhouse and Frank Olito
Boston Globe, March 14, 2014
... “Too many people are working hard and falling further behind,” said [US Labor Secretary Thomas E.] Perez in an interview with Boston Globe editors and reporters this week.
Perez was in Boston Wednesday and Thursday as part of a national, campaign-style tour to promote Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25 an hour. He met Thursday in Cambridge with [eight] small business owners who told him that they already pay more than minimum wage — up to $14 an hour — because it helps them attract and retain productive workers.
“It’s not just Tom Perez saying this, and it’s not just low-wage workers saying this,” Perez said in a brief interview after the event at Cambridge Naturals, a natural health store in the Porter Square Shopping Center. “It’s business owners who are saying this.” ...
For the nation’s poorest working families, an increase to the minimum wage would help lift them out of poverty, Perez said. Many economists say a higher minimum wage would lead to increased consumer spending, which drives the economy.
Increasing the minimum wage has emerged as a key issue both nationally and in Massachusetts. Here, the Legislature is considering increasing the state minimum wage, now $8 an hour, to $10.50.
The Senate has already passed a bill to increase the state’s minimum wage. On Thursday, Massachusetts House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, a Winthrop Democrat, said he supported an increase to $10.50 by the middle of 2016.
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