Oregon governor signs landmark minimum-wage law News
Oregon governor signs landmark minimum-wage law

Oregon Governor Kate Brown [official website] signed [press release; remarks] a landmark minimum-wage law [text, PDF] on Wednesday. The law makes Oregon the first state to mandate higher pay in cities than rural areas. The system works according to the specific economic need in a particular region, taking the cost of living of each into account. The minimum wage is set to gradually increase through 2022, with the first increase scheduled for July 1. The law was enacted to help working families earn a reasonable income while allowing businesses time to adapt. Currently Oregon’s minimum wage is $9.75. The law will raise rates to $12.50 in sparsely populated areas and up to $14.75 an hour in Portland.

The Oregon legislature approved the law [JURIST report] in February. The comprehensive legislation [press release] was a compromise in consideration of the needs of families working on minimum wage rates as well as the business that will have to increase payments in order to meet the new standards. Oregon and 14 other states [Reuters report] have increased the minimum wage requirement. Massachusetts increased its rate [documents] to $10 per hour on January 1, as did California [text, PDF]. The national minimum wage rate is now over $9.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.