Minimum Wage Jump & Party Tips

Minimum Wage Jump & Party Tips plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The minimum wage in Washington State will take a jump on Sunday to $9.04 an hour. The .37 increases an already record high state minimum wage surpassed by only a few individual cities. Washington's minimum wage is adjusted each year for inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for the past 12 months, which is up more than 4 percent. The yearly recalculation is required by Initiative 688, which was approved by Washington voters in 1998. The federal minimum wage is $7.25.

In only a few days the New Year will be here and with it a lot of celebrating. Holiday celebrations involving alcohol can be fun and safe with some common sense tips for party hosts and guests. Lena Newlin is with the University of Wyoming.

NEWLIN: Not everybody is going to want to drink alcohol and it’s always important to offer non-alcoholic alternatives for those people as well and you can liven those up by having kind of fancier juice drinks, bottled waters, various non-alcoholic beverages. And ideally you want to provide high protein or high carbohydrate foods such as cheeses and meats. Those are especially good. You want to try to avoid saltier foods which would encourage people to drink more.

And for goodness sake, don’t drink and drive.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Numerous U.S. Senators and House members have written yet a second letter to U.S.Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis asking that the proposed new rules that would forbid young people under the age of sixteen from operating certain farm machinery and participating in other farming activities be withdrawn. This second letter reiterates concerns about how the proposed new rules would ultimately affect farm families, agricultural education programs, and other family farm structures. In a rather strong tone, the letter asks the Department of Labor to cease and desist in pursuing such changes to the existing regulations regarding agricultural child labor provisions, stating that the DOL’s claims that “the proposed agricultural revisions would in no way compromise the statutory child labor parental exemption involving children working on farms owned or operated by their parents are false based on existing regulations and the Department’s own interpretive documents”. Farming is a dangerous business, but a blanket regulation creating parity between agricultural and nonagricultural child labor will only result in penalizing family farms.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.