By Eileen Godin
Times Leader (PA), August 28, 2015
Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center employee Katlyn Wolfe recently took a second job before her company’s minimum wage hike announcement last week. ... Wolfe along with over 1,000 other Geisinger Health System employees learned how raising its minimum wage to $10 would affect them. The monetary impact, which will range from $500 to $4,000 annually, was a voluntary move that management said will enable the organization “to take care of their employees.” ... Some of the fields included in the wage increase are dietary aides, housekeeping aides, care assistants, image scan operators, receptionists, file clerks and food service workers to name a few. ...
The health care provider’s wage increase could be considered a controversial move as debates between lawmakers on raising the state’s minimum wage have not resulted in any changes.
Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national network of business owners and executives, uphold the belief of raising the minimum working wage. The organization proposes an increase to the “federal minimum wage to at least $12 by 2020.”
On their website they state, “Stuck since 2009 at $7.25 an hour – just $15,080 a year – the minimum wage impoverishes working families and weakens the consumer spending at the heart of our economy.” ...
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