Minimum wage in Louisiana

Louisiana has no minimum wage laws in regard to overtime or minimum wage or regulation of salaried employees and bans local municipalities from imposing minimum wage rates for their workers. However, the state of Louisiana does abide by the Fair Labor Standards Act regulating minimum wage, overtime and salaried employees.

Recently, the state senate introduced a bill to enact a state minimum wage that sets a minimum wage of $1.00 in excess of the required federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour and the senate passed the bill to increase Louisiana’s minimum wage to $6.15 per hour. Senator Charles Jones authored the Senate Bill 700 and stated that it was time for the state of Louisiana, the poorest state in the nation, to say to their workers that their representatives do care about them.

This bill with amendments attached to it actually lowered the original minimum wage rate from $7.00 per hour and exempted political subdivisions of the state and businesses with fewer than twenty-five employees. Student workers would not qualify for the higher wage. Newly hired employees would be paid less than minimum wage during their first year during their training period.

Senator Jones found that 1,933 state workers make $5.15 an hour which is the current federal minimum wage. Of those workers 450 are classified under civil service and 1,483 are unclassified. By raising their pay to $6.15 per hour the state would assume a $1.4 million cost.

A worker who earns $5.15 per hour or $206 a week before taxes does not provide a good living wage. Senator Jones agreed that adding $1.00 per hour more is not really enough but he realized passing a higher amount would be difficult. At $6.15 per hour workers can still qualify for subsidized housing, food stamps, Medicaid and other social services. It was also noted that the states with higher minimum wage are doing economically better than Louisiana.

Currently this bill is in the Louisiana House for final passage.