The Senate unexpectedly found itself debating the minimum wage on Thursday night. The effort to raise the wage to $12.00 an hour by 2020 was introduced as an amendment on a different bill.
Senator Marilyn Moore of Bridgeport was behind the move. She said she took a minimum wage job for a short time last summer to experience what many families go through.
"So I not only can give you the testimony of people who came before our committees," she told the chamber, "but I can give you my own testimony that I could have never survived if I had a family on the money that I was was being paid at a low wage."
She introduced the measure as a "strike all" amendment on the so-called Walmart bill. The original bill would have imposed fines on big companies that fail to pay their workers a living wage, if those workers end up on state assistance. But the amendment would have removed all of the previous provisions, and replaced them with a new schedule for raising the minimum wage.
Moore's plan had the wage rising by stages to $12.00 an hour by 2020. Currently the wage stands at $9.60 and is set to rise to $10.10 in January 2017.
But Republican senators made an effort to filibuster the measure, with many, including Senator Rob Kane saying they believe it would result in economic harm.
"The free market system is the best system we have in the world," he said. "And when government interjects itself into that market, we then may be possibly doing more harm than good."
As part of the effort to run out the clock, Senator Paul Formica described at length the wages he would have to pay each of his workers at his Niantic fish restaurant if the measure was enacted, and what it would cost his business each year.
Some suggested that the easiest and fairest way of dealing with the wage would be to peg it to the consumer price index and have cost of living adjustments on an automatic schedule.
Senate Democrats don’t appear to have consulted with their house colleagues on introducing the debate - House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said the issue came as a surprise to him. Eventually, after about five hours, the debate was tabled without a resolution.
