Minimum wage increased backed, but opposition likely By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle In 1970, the minimum wage was $1.45 an hour. What you could buy with that $1.45 would cost you $8 today. The minimum wage today, however, is only $5.15 an hour - even less if your job includes tips or farm work, or you're under 18. The figures are from the state Department of Workforce Development, which recently formed an advisory council to look at raising the minimum wage in Wisconsin. The council voted 16-2 to recommend a raise to $5.70 an hour this year and $6.50 an hour in 2005. That's if the proposal went quickly to the Legislature and wasn't opposed. But when you consider that the two council members voting against raising the minimum wage were the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate Labor Committees, you realize that may not happen soon. Those two lawmakers, state Sen. Tom Reynolds, R-West Allis, and Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Palmyra, would control the likely path of a minimum wage bill through the Legislature. Still, the proposed raise got support from the few people who attended a hearing on the matter held by the DWD at the Brown County Central Library on Wednesday. Of the three people who spoke, two, both business people, supported the raise. The third, Jay Hein, director of an industry for the disabled, spoke against a possible wage floor for the disabled, saying it would hurt their ability to get any jobs at all, but also supported a general minimum wage hike. Of the seven people who attended, one registered against the wage hike but left before her turn to speak, while three others registered without giving an opinion. Dan Aude, a salon owner who ran for Green Bay City Council this year, said he supported the wage hike and that businesses paying only minimum wage found it difficult to hire people. And Jeff Knaus of the Northeastern Wisconsin Building Trades Council supported the higher wage as good for the state's economy. State Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, who was on the DWD council, had introduced bills to raise the minimum wage when he chaired the state Senate's Labor Committee but lost that position when the Republicans took over both houses of the Legislature. "There has been a 24 percent loss of buying power since 1979," Hansen said. He suggested the minimum wage should have been increased in smaller steps instead of one big leap after several years, and called the proposed increase "a good first step." Several nearby states have already increased their minimum wages, and that could leave Wisconsin as a low-wage "island," unable to draw quality workers, Hansen said.