Big Island employers began paying the state’s new increased minimum wage last week, and the change is either long overdue or an unwelcome hardship, depending on who you talk to. Hawaii’s minimum wage jumped Thursday from $7.25 an hour to $7.75 an hour as part of a four-year step process to ultimately raise the wage to $10.10 an hour in 2018. The minimum will go up to $8.50 an hour in 2016 and $9.25 an hour in 2017. Legislators received plenty of commentary from voters on both sides of the issue as Senate Bill 2609 worked its way through the approval process. Many business owners balked at the minimum wage increases, saying they would stress already tight margins, while labor advocates said the increases would help low-wage families statewide make ends meet. Twenty-one-year-old Prici Jorju works to help support her two brothers and grandfather with her minimum-wage job at the Regal Prince Kuhio 9 movie theater at Prince Kuhio Plaza. As she worked Tuesday behind the concessions counter, the young woman said the additional money would make a difference in her budget, albeit a small one. “It could have been higher,” she said of the increase, “but it’s certainly better now.”
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:08:05 +0000
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