For over a year now, Delawareans have come together in the face of multiple crises to care for each other like never before. Grocery workers and farmworkers served tirelessly to keep food on shelves, while staff at drugstores and pharmacies ensured medicines and personal protective equipment were stocked, despite shortages.
We’ve also learned something very important: Both the crisis of the pandemic and economic collapse have made it vividly clear that our lowest-paid workers are, in fact, the most essential to our survival. But in our state, they perform this role while making a minimum wage of just $9.25 an hour. Low-wage workers also tend to work jobs that have suffered most from job cuts and high infection rates. So while bearing the brunt of both ends of this crisis, too many are struggling to afford basic necessities like food, rent and transportation.
While Congress works to pass a higher national minimum wage, it’s time for Delaware to follow other states like California, Massachusetts and Florida, who have already moved to raise their minimum wage toward $15 an hour. Currently, Delaware State Sen. Jack Walsh, D-Stanton, has introduced legislation that would gradually increase Delaware’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. Such an increase would raise the pay for 82% of Delaware workers who currently live in poverty. A person working 40 hours per week would make $31,200, enough to pay for necessities like rent, food, transportation and clothing for a family.
Too often, opponents of raising the wage argue that these jobs are mostly filled by teenagers working part time, but that couldn’t be further from the case. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 86% of low-wage workers are over 20, and nearly 6 in 10 low-wage workers are women. A quarter of workers who stand to benefit from raising the minimum wage also support children. These are working families we’re talking about, not teenagers.
People in Delaware and everywhere deserve wages that allow them to not only survive but to thrive. In 2021, we must come together to finally raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for everyone in our community.
Larry Lambert is a member of the Delaware House of Representatives in District 7, representing Claymont. He ran with the support of the Delaware Working Families Party.
