During a speech Wednesday in front of retail merchants, Gov. Ned Lamont stood by his policy to increase the state’s minimum wage — a move retailers have said would hurt their bottom lines.
The issue came up after Lamont finished a six-minute speech at the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association annual awards luncheon in Hartford and opened the floor to questions.
Karen Munson, owner of Bolton-based Munson’s Chocolates, wanted to know why Lamont didn’t include a provision that would allow some employers to pay lower wages to youths.
Lamont said a “subminimum” or training wage does exist, although lawmakers tweaked it, making it more generous for workers.
Prior law generally allowed employers to pay minors as low as 85 percent of the regular minimum wage for their first 200 hours of employment. Under the new law, however, employers may only pay a training wage to minors for the first 90 days of employment, and it must be the greater of $10.10 or 85 percent of the regular minimum wage.
“I don’t want to do anything to discourage you to hire [youths],” Lamont told the retail merchants audience. “It was very important to me that … we do have the subminimum wage, and that we [raise the minimum wage] on a gradual basis … so we do everything we can not to be disruptive to the business that you’ve got.”
In a press conference after the event, Lamont defended the minimum-wage hike his administration spearheaded as “the best thing that we’ve done in a long time.”
Connecticut’s minimum hourly wage increased Oct. 1 to $11 from $10.10 and is scheduled to go up by another $1 every 11 months until it reaches $15 on June 1, 2023.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, the minimum wage indexes future annual increases to the federal employment cost index.
The push to increase the minimum wage, which impacted more than 330,000 workers in the state, received pushback from Republican state leadership and some of the state’s largest business lobbies.
The Connecticut Retail Merchants Association in testimony earlier this year warned that a minimum-wage hike, in addition to other headwinds the industry is facing including the rise of e-commerce and the adoption of paid family medical leave, could cause the local industry to reach a “breaking point.”
Nearly half of the more than 350 businesses recently surveyed by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) said they plan to cut staff to manage the state’s first minimum wage increase since 2014.
Other issues
During his speech Wednesday Lamont also discussed the need to invest in transportation infrastructure in order to ease traffic congestion and speed up Metro-North rail service.
“Every single business leader I have talked to has said being able to get people around the state, which is in gridlock right now, is key to our economic future and our economic development,” Lamont said.
Lamont also touted Connecticut’s decision to force online retailers doing business in Connecticut to charge and collect the state’s 6.35 percent sales tax, saying he thought the playing field needed to be more level for brick-and-mortar retailers.
“I think [brick-and-mortar] retail could compete with anybody,” Lamont said in front of a room of mostly brick-and-mortar retailers. “You bring a very different type of experience to the shopping world.”
