New Jersey Voters Give State's Lower Wage Workers a Big Boost

By Tara Nurin Courtesy of NJ Spotlight

New Jersey voters yesterday approved an increase to the minimum wage and gave their blessing to allowing veterans organizations to pay their operating costs with money raised by hosting games of chance.

By a vote of 61 to 39, voters passed a controversial constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 per hour and mandate annual increases. The ballot measure was expected to pass, though not by the margins of the veterans’ initiative, which passed 81 percent to 19 percent, according to vote totals with about 99 percent of voting districts reporting at 1:00 a.m..

Minimum wage

Backed by labor unions and workers’ rights groups and opposed by pro-business organizations, the wage question raises the hourly minimum wage by a dollar and ties future increases to the Consumer Price Index. Before yesterday, New Jersey’s minimum wage matched the hourly $7.25 mandated by the federal government and set in 2009.

According to New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP), 241,000 working New Jerseyans who make between $7.25 and $8.25 per hour will see their paychecks immediately increase, and the wages of 188,000 workers making between $8.25 and $9.25 will increase as pay scales are adjusted upwards.

Read more at NJSpotlight.com

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