Wage Boost Fails In Senate

Manufacturers are no longer confronting a two-step, $1 per hour increase in the U.S. minimum wage. On Sept. 22 the Senate killed a proposed increase to $6.15 an hour. However, new efforts in the 106th Congress, which takes office in January 1999, will be made to raise the minimum wage. Approving the Senate's 55-44 defeat of legislation sponsored by Edward M. Kennedy (D, Mass.) and noting that the minimum had been raised in 1996 and 1997, Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C., judged that another increase now was "premature at best" and possibly stifling to "the creation of jobs traditionally filled by younger and less experienced workers."