By Jim Hagarty
2017
I don’t know enough about the issue of raising the minimum wage to have an educated opinion and need to do some research but I remember when the minimum wage was $1 an hour in the sixties. Then by the mid seventies it was $4.20, I believe. I was at a job that paid $4.20 an hour, so that was probably minimum wage. I know it’s complicated because I believe there were different minimum wages for different sectors. In any case, I find it interesting that if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it should have been $20 an hour or more by now. I remember the $1 minimum because I had friends who were working as chicken catchers for that wage while I was exalted, working on bridge construction for $1.65 an hour. I worked 50 hours a week for $82.50. We were paid normal rate for overtime hours, no extra pay. In spite of the $4.20 an hour days, later on, I did manage to buy my first brand new car for $4,000.
(The Canadian province of Ontario, where I live, is raising the minimum wage in stages, starting at $14 an hour and increasing eventually to $15 an hour. In my bridge construction days, when I was 16, I earned $16.50 for a 10-hour day.)