HARRISBURG — Democratic state lawmakers called on the Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Senate to raise the minimum wage as part of this year’s almost-overdue budget.
During a news conference Tuesday — on the 20th anniversary of the vote that last raised the state minimum wage — lawmakers lambasted the upper chamber’s leaders, characterizing them as a roadblock to enacting legislation they say is necessary as the cost of living has increased.
Democrats want to gradually raise the hourly wage floor from $7.25 to $15, a number Republicans have long argued is too high. The upper chamber last passed a minimum wage increase in 2019, which would have set a $9.50 floor. (It failed in the state House, which was then also controlled by Republicans.)
Speaking on the floor of the state Senate about the budget process Tuesday, Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) said he would be open to advancing a minimum wage bill if lawmakers would “meet in the middle” with a wage that was lower than $15.
Pittman elaborated further in an email to Spotlight PA, writing that “any possible action would need to be a commonsense adjustment, and sensitive to the impact changes would have on small businesses and non-profit organizations.”
Democratic governors and lawmakers in the state House and Senate have for years made an annual show of calling for a higher wage.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has pitched a $15-an-hour minimum in his last four budget addresses, and at least one — and sometimes more — bills to raise the wage have passed the state House in every legislative session since Democrats took control of the chamber in 2022. Each has stalled in the Republican-controlled state Senate.
“Are our workers not deserving to be able to be paid with dignity when housing costs have skyrocketed?” House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia) said at a Tuesday news conference. “Look at what has happened in the 20 years since the Pennsylvania Senate Republicans have raised the wage. Well, we're here this morning to say it together, ‘Raise the wage.’”
During an appearance with MSNOW's Jen Psaki last week, Shapiro said that raising the minimum wage would be one of his priorities if Democrats win control of the state Senate in November's election.
In March, the House passed its latest version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Jason Dawkins (D., Philadelphia). The measure would incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by January 2029. It would also set wages for tipped employees at 60% of the statewide minimum wage. The state Senate hasn’t acted on it.
They’ve tried different approaches in the past. Last year, for instance, Dawkins sponsored a bill that would have raised the wage to $15 in counties with the biggest populations but $12 in smaller ones — a design intended to get some Republicans on board. It, too, never saw action from the upper chamber.
Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D., Allegheny) also tried a procedural technique to force action on Dawkins’ latest bill, filing a discharge petition in an attempt to bring the bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote.
Members can theoretically use discharge petitions to force popular bills out of a committee without the consent of the committee’s chair, by putting the petition to a majority floor vote. But without some bipartisan support, they’re easy to circumvent. When Costa made a motion for the full chamber to consider his petition on Tuesday, it failed in a party-line vote.
Rep. Roni Green (D., Philadelphia), one of 12 co-sponsors on Dawkins’ current bill, said in an interview that she “can't think of anything better or quicker that would impact working families and the lives of working families more than raising the minimum wage.”
“I hear from my constituents how a minimum wage increase of at least $15 an hour … will allow them to continue to put food on the table, pay for housing, expenses, pay for gas that has increased, pay for childcare that is increasing,” she said.
Green started her minimum wage advocacy while working as a Philadelphia human services caseworker and serving as a shop steward for her then-union, SEIU Local 668. The union represents about 20,000 workers in Pennsylvania, many of whom work for state, county, and local government.
Republicans have consistently argued that raising the minimum wage will not solve the problems that proponents claim it would.
“If I truly believed that a government-mandated wage would be the utopia that we hear, and that it would fix all of the problems that we hear about, I would support it.” House Minority Leader Rep. Jesse Topper (R., Bedford) said when Dawkins’ bill passed the chamber this year. “The problem is fundamentally, I don't believe it will accomplish those goals.”
The conservative Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry has also been a consistent opponent of a higher minimum wage. A spokesperson for the organization said in a statement that it has “long warned that government-mandated wage increases can reduce employee hours, eliminate jobs, and raise consumer prices.”
“If lawmakers pursue an increase, it must be paired with pro-growth policies that help employers continue hiring, investing, and growing in Pennsylvania,” the spokesperson added.
Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D., Philadelphia), who helped negotiate Pennsylvania’s last minimum wage increase, routinely notes the number of days that have passed since that 2006 vote. That tally is now at 7,305.
“We are going to keep pushing and pushing until the Republicans in the Senate do what's right,” she said during Democrats’ Tuesday news conference.
The bill the legislature passed 20 years ago gradually raised the state's minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.15 an hour. When the federal government raised the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in 2009, that rate became effective in the commonwealth.
In 2025, there were more than 40,000 workers in Pennsylvania who were paid at or below the minimum wage, according to a report from the Department of Labor and Industry’s Minimum Wage Advisory Board. More than 80% of those who earned at or below the $7.25 an hour threshold were women, according to the report.
Just over 17% of Pennsylvania workers were paid an hourly salary in 2025 that sits between the current minimum wage and the $15 an hour level that Democratic lawmakers have proposed — a slightly smaller percentage than the year prior.
Every state that borders Pennsylvania has a higher minimum wage. New York has the highest at $17 an hour, and West Virginia the lowest at $8.75 an hour.
“It's not just my constituents that are affected by higher grocery bills, by higher utility bills, by higher transportation bills, by higher housing bills. This affects people in all 67 counties,” Green said. “I'm asking the Republican Senate to please come to the table, negotiate in good faith.”