Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Thursday, May 29, 2014
(INDIANAPOLIS) - Organized-labor picketers are trying to turn up the heat for a minimum wage increase.
About 20 protesters circled the pavement outside the downtown Indianapolis building which houses Indiana Senator Dan Coats' office. Coats has opposed President Obama's call for a 39-percent increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour -- he argues it would cost jobs.
Mary Kay Dugan with the union-affiliated group Jobs With Justice acknowledges a Congressional Budget Office study estimated a million workers could be laid off, but notes the study also concluded 16-million would get a raise.
Indiana's Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly, says a minimum wage hike is overdue, but he leaves open what the new rate should be.
Dugan echoes the White House argument that the big jump is necessary to make up for cost-of-living increases. The minimum wage last went up in 2009, the third step of a phased-in increase approved two years earlier.
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