When not politically active, Neal is a businessman working for KBACE Technologies, Inc. a New Hampshire based consulting and software development company. Neal resides in Exeter with his wife Barbara.


It has been eight years since the minimum wage has been raised in the State of New Hampshire. Although the cost of housing and other necessities has risen steadily during this time, the minimum wage has remained immovable at the federally mandated minimum of $5.15 per hour.


Last year an effort to raise the minimum wage to $6.00 an hour and create a commission to study the issue of workers’ wages was defeated by one vote. In the coming legislative year it is likely that similar legislation will be introduced and hopefully, this time, the New Hampshire Legislature, will move to support our State’s most vulnerable workers.


The failure of the New Hampshire legislature to act on this issue does not align with the stance of other states in our region. New Hampshire’s minimum wage is almost 25% less than the average minimum wage for the other 5 New England States (Rhode Island $6.75, Maine $6.35, Massachusetts $6.75, Connecticut $7.10 and Vermont $6.75). The cost of living in New England has risen significantly since 1997 and the other States in our region have adjusted their minimum wage to compensate for this rise. New Hampshire alone has failed to raise its minimum wage and yet the cost of living in New Hampshire has kept pace with or exceeded that of the other New England states.


Workers earning the minimum wage simply can’t make ends meet in the State of New Hampshire. The effects of the wage-stagnation for the estimated 30,000 workers whose jobs pay the minimum wage have been devastating (Economic Policy Institute July, 2004). A fulltime worker earning the NH minimum wage brings home $10,712 per year, which is $2,000 less than the federally defined poverty line. In 2000, a study by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy found that a living wage (defined as enough to cloth, feed, and house a single person) in New Hampshire is $9.00 per hour. For workers trying to raise a family on the minimum wage the situation is even worse. It is estimated that the required living wage for a single parent trying to raise one child is $15.00 in Southern New Hampshire and $14.00 in the North Country. Simply stated, the minimum wage in the State of New Hampshire provides a single parent, working 40 hours a week, 1/3 of what it takes to survive.


The legislature during its deliberations this year, should take into account the message we are sending to workers who earn such low wages. These are people who are working; they are doing what we as a society encourage them to do--go out, get a job, be productive, and provide for your family. And yet, at such low wages, we are telling them that the product of their labor is meaningless and that there is no reward for getting out and working.


When legislation to raise the minimum wage is introduced again, it may help our legislators to remember the words of Franklin Roosevelt as he signed the first minimum wage law, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wage I mean more than a bare subsistence level--I mean the wages of a decent living”


It is my hope that in the coming months our community will work to give a helping hand to those who need it the most in our State by fighting for an increase in the minimum wage.