Mitch Perry
Philip Levine may be headed to a showdown with Gov. Rick Scott regarding his city’s passage of an ordinance raising the living wage, but he’s being rewarded with a visit to White House on Thursday.
Levine will deliver remarks and moderate a panel discussion on living wage as part of President Obama’s Champions of Change series. The event includes U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and Cecilia Muñoz, assistant to the president and director of the White House domestic policy council.
The Miami Beach mayor first proposed increasing his city’s living wage last May, and the city commission approved the measure last month. The measure, effective January 1, 2018, will gradually increase the living wage to $10.31, and increase over four years to $13.31. The new minimum wage will apply to all workers employed in the City of Miami Beach and those covered by the federal minimum wage.
“I am honored to join Secretary Perez and a number of leaders at the White House this afternoon to discuss ways communities across the country can lead on the issue of living wage,” Levine said.
In 2004, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed a state constitutional amendment that tied increases in the state minimum wage to inflation. Originally pegged at $6.15 an hour, its now at $8.05 an hour.
Language in the 2004 amendment allows local governments to set their own higher minimum wage. But in 2013, Scott signed a law that forbade municipalities from assigning their own minimum.
Levine says he’s prepared for the challenge that will inevitably come from the state.
“If the state challenges us, the courts will have to decide,” he told this reporter last month.
