Shapiro Vows to More Than Double Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage as Democrats Take Full Control

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has promised to use his party’s new grip on Harrisburg to more than double the state’s minimum wage, setting up a rapid first test of the first Democratic trifecta in the state in more than three decades.

“We’re going to more than double Pennsylvania’s minimum wage. Codify abortion rights into our state Constitution. Fund mass transit. Build more housing,” Shapiro said in remarks on Sunday, 8 November, Political.org reported, drawing on The Hill’s account of his comments.

Democrats flipped the Pennsylvania Senate in the 3 November election, taking a 26-24 majority after Republicans had held the chamber 27-23, and expanded their majority in the state House to roughly 111 seats. Shapiro, who won re-election to a second term, now leads a party that controls the governor’s office and both chambers for the first time since 1993 — a position that turns campaign promises his party could not pass under divided government into bills he can sign.

Pennsylvania is one of the largest states still paying the federal minimum wage, and the governor’s plan would put its wage floor on a path to at least $15 an hour.

A wage frozen for two decades

Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour, the federal floor set in 2009. State lawmakers last voted to raise it in 2006, and every neighbouring state has since moved ahead — a point Shapiro made in his February budget address, when he said: “Our minimum wage in Pennsylvania has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for the last 16 years. In that time, every single one of our neighboring states has raised the wage for their workers.”

“More than double” $7.25 means a wage above $14.50, and the $15 figure Shapiro campaigned on fits that pledge. During the campaign he told voters that “the first bill that will reach my desk will be to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour,” and State Senator Vincent Hughes has said the wage bill will be the party’s first order of business. “If you are working and making the minimum wage in Pennsylvania, we are going to, as first order of business, double that sucker and get you some more money in your pockets,” Hughes said at a press conference last week.

Abortion rights in the Constitution

The second pillar of Shapiro’s pledge is writing abortion rights into Pennsylvania’s Constitution — a more demanding step than passing a statute. A constitutional amendment in Pennsylvania generally requires approval by the legislature followed by a vote of the public, so the timing and ballot placement remain open questions.

Shapiro has framed the move as a safeguard that cannot easily be reversed by a future legislature or governor, though the amendment process itself still takes time.

Transit, housing and abuse survivors

The governor’s list did not stop at wages and reproductive rights. He also pledged to fund mass transit, build more housing and give survivors of childhood sexual abuse a window to sue the perpetrators and the institutions that protected them — a long-running cause in Pennsylvania that has stalled repeatedly under divided government.

Shapiro declined to discuss specifics when he gathered legislative leaders in Harrisburg on 4 November, telling reporters that he and lawmakers would return in the coming weeks with a detailed agenda for the first 100 days of the new term.

What the trifecta changes

For more than a decade, Pennsylvania has had divided government. Senate Republicans used that position to block funding for public transport, prevent a minimum-wage rise and stop abortion rights from being written into the Constitution.

That constraint is now gone. The change is part of a wider national shift: Democrats also won the House and control of the Senate in Washington, and were among six new state trifectas secured in the midterms, a sweep covered in NationWire’s report on the six new state trifectas.

Business groups are watching closely. Luke Bernstein of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry told Lehigh Valley Business that a minimum-wage increase is now much more likely to be approved and could come as early as January, while cautioning that different versions of a wage bill would have very different effects on employers.

What happens next

The new legislature is sworn in in January, and the wage bill is expected to be the first measure Democrats advance. The abortion amendment, by contrast, will move more slowly, since it must pass the legislature and then go before voters.

The details — the exact wage figure, the phase-in timetable and the wording of the constitutional amendment — are still to be negotiated, and the governor’s first 100 days plan, due in the coming weeks, will show how much of Sunday’s pledge becomes law.