Near the end of a press conference on Thursday, County Executive Marc Elrich said he doesn’t quote his father often, but it felt appropriate to do so.
Elrich and other officials were celebrating the first day the county’s minimum wage increased to $15 an hour for large employers and slightly less for smaller employers.
The county executive’s father would often tell him that you could “put all the gold in the world in front of an entrance to a coal mine” but it still takes a worker to go into the mine and retrieve a block of coal.
“Wealth isn’t produced by money, wealth is produced by workers,” Elrich told those gathered in the social hall in the Wheaton Recreation Center Thursday.
Thursday marked the first day employers with 51 or more employees are required to pay employees at least $15 an hour. Employers with 11 to 50 employees must pay at least $14 an hour and will have to pay $15 an hour by July 1, 2023. And small employers must pay at least $13.50 an hour, which will increase to $15 an hour on July 1, 2024.
Even as elected officials and union leaders lauded the increases in the minimum wage, they acknowledged the wage is the “floor,” as Montgomery County remains an expensive place to live.
Del. Emily Shetty (D-Kensington), said her mom worked three minimum wage jobs to support her family after her parents divorced. One summer when she was growing up, the water heater broke. By the end of summer, the family had “scraped enough money to replace it”
“It took three minimum wage jobs and my mom working overnight shifts in a factory to be able to afford that,” Shetty said. “And that’s not how families in this country should be forced to live.”
Dyana Forester, president of the Metro Washington Labor Council, said it’s important that people remember the importance of essential workers — grocery store workers, nurses, delivery truck drivers and others — after the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s our responsibility to not only call them heroes, and not [just] lift them up when it’s a pandemic, but make sure as we legislate and as we lead, that we’re lifting them up,” Forester said.
In an interview, Elrich said county officials will need to revisit the issue in the future, as the minimum wage no longer is enough to be defined as a “living wage,” one where people can pay for rent, groceries, medicine and other needs.
According to the living wage calculator by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a single working adult in Montgomery County needs to make $19.82 to earn such a wage. For a couple with one child, they must each make $20.59 an hour.
“Anybody who works should be able to put a roof over their head, [and] should be able to feed their kids. That’s just the baseline,” Elrich said. “Any civilized society should have that as the floor for people who work in that society.”
Steve Bohnel can be reached at steve.bohnel@moco360.media