Maine

Today in the Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald, full-page ads thanked Senators Susan Collins and Angus King for standing with Maine’s tipped workers and voting against the elimination of the federal tipped minimum wage. After successfully rallying to restore the Maine tip credit and save their tips…

The debate over whether to raise Maine’s minimum wage by 60 percent (and raise its tipped minimum wage by over 200 percent) is a study in contrasts. On the one side, advocates for the extreme wage increase have been powered by five- and six-figure checks flooding in from out-of-state donors. We previously…

In the pantheon of PAC names, “Mainers for Fair Wages” must rank among the least offensive in American electoral history. However, their benign name hides that which their campaign finance disclosure forms reveal: “Mainers for Fair Wages” is fueled by out-of-state money. EPI analyzed data from the Maine Ethics Commission…

A $12 minimum wage will cost the state of Maine at least 4,000 jobs, but that hasn’t kept proponents in the state from advancing bad arguments to support it. Consider a recent release by the labor union-backed National Employment Law Project (NELP), which argues that large businesses rather than…

Proponents of a higher minimum wage in Maine, led by the state AFL-CIO, have gathered enough signatures to put their proposed $12 minimum wage to a vote this November. But earlier today a coalition representing approximately ten thousand Maine business owners announced their support for a competing $10 minimum wage proposal. Last year,…

Voters in Portland, ME, will next week decide at the ballot box whether to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. It’s a controversial proposal: The City Council just increased the city’s minimum wage  to $10.10 an hour, and many local voices — including the editorial board of the Press-Herald and…

Portland’s City Council recently voted to raise the city’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Now, proponents at the Maine AFL-CIO have launched a referendum to raise the minimum wage statewide by 60 percent to $12 an hour. In support of this effort, a liberal advocacy group called the Maine…