During the general election, WPLN asked the candidates to be Nashville’s mayor about insitituting a city minimum wage. With the field narrowed down to two, the chances of raising the minimum wage are a little better with one candidate, while the other argues raising pay will hurt the very people it’s meant to help.
At-large Metro Council member Megan Barry wasn’t the one laying out a plan to institute a city minimum wage during the general election. That was Bill Freeman, who narrowly missed making the runoff. But Barry’s support is unequivocal.
“Yes, I firmly believe that we should have a wage that reflects what it really requires to live here, and that’s a living wage,” she told WPLN in January.
According to
a living wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the amount needed for workers to support themselves in Nashville is currently about $11 an hour.
But at that rate, former school board chair David Fox says he expects some jobs will just go away.
“When you cut the bottom rungs off the ladder, you’re forcing a significant number of people into long-term unemployment,” Fox said. “That’s not a scenario that I have a lot of confidence in.”
The Republican-led Tennessee legislature has also objected to local minimum wage hikes, passing a law in 2013 that would make it difficult for Nashville to establish a higher minimum wage, even if it wanted to.
On July 1, Louisville
began raising its minimum wage to $9 an hour. It was immediately
challenged in court by business groups, who claim a city doesn’t have the authority to enforce pay rules.
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