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By Ally Schweitzer
WAMU 88.5 (NPR), June 30, 2020

Advocates who fought for a $15 minimum wage couldn’t have predicted a threat like the coronavirus. ... But labor-focused economists and progressive business groups say an economic downturn is the wrong time to pay workers less.

“People forget that the federal minimum wage was enacted during the incredibly hard times of the Great Depression,” says Alissa Barron-Menza, vice president of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, which supported wage hikes in Virginia and Maryland. “The goal of the minimum wage was to alleviate poverty and to boost consumer spending so that businesses would have someone to sell their products and services to. And that’s exactly what it did.” ...

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NPR https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/06/30/885198853/minimum-wage-increases-face-a-new-challenge-from-coronavirus