Sen. Christine Tartaglione (Philadelphia) speaks at a news conference on raising the minimum wage, June 30, 2026. (Photo by Ian Karbal/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
Tuesday marked 20 years since Pennsylvania lawmakers passed the law last to raise the state minimum wage. In 2006 it was $7.15.
In the state Senate, a majority of Republicans voted unanimously to thwart Democrats’ efforts to raise them to $15 an hour with annual cost-of-living increases.
An attempt to force the vote was proposed by Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny).
This procedural arc effectively called a vote on the matter Whether to vote in favor of the bill that has been passed by the House for a vote. It’s one of the few tools minority party members have to force a vote on legislation that’s vital to them.
However, Senate rules established at the beginning of the current session meant lawmakers could not debate it content of the plan voted in favor.
So without mentioning the minimum wage, Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) asked senators to vote no.
The result was a division of party lines. All 23 Democrats voted “yes” and all 27 Republicans voted “no.”
According to latest minimum wage report the state Department of Labor shows that in 2025, about 42,900 workers in Pennsylvania received a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less.
Another 510,800 earned between $7.26 and $15.
In all states bordering Pennsylvania, the minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum, ranging from $8.75 an hour in West Virginia to $16 an hour in New York.
When the vote on Costa’s motion ended and senators were no longer banned from speaking on the minimum wage, Pittman explained his position.
“I often think about the minimum wage issue, and it’s no secret that in my role as leader, I have made it very clear publicly and privately that we are willing to talk about meeting in the middle,” he said. But he accused Democrats of refusing to budge on the $15 minimum wage
“The reality is this community is very diverse,” Pittman said. “The cost of living varies by region, the cost of labor varies by region. I can say that I have heard especially from nonprofits in the district. I represent the challenges that a $15 an hour minimum wage would impose.”
Last year, a bill passed that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour in most of the state. and up to $12 an hour in smaller, rural countiesit did not receive a vote in the Senate after it was passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
A spokesman for Pittman did not respond to Capital-Star’s questions about what type of compromise he would support.
Sen. Christine Tartaglione (Philadelphia) also rose to speak on the minimum wage. For the other members, the beginning of her speech was undoubtedly familiar.
“I get up today because it has been 7,297 days since this Legislature last passed the minimum wage,” she said.
Tartaglione has made roughly the same remark, with a change in number, at the end of virtually every Senate session day since June 2019. On Tuesday, she went further.
“Today we are talking about the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country,” she said. “America is supposed to be a country where if you do everything right and work hard and do your job, you should make a living wage and be able to raise children… That doesn’t happen for over a million people.”
She also discussed her role in passing the recent bill raising the minimum wage in Pennsylvania. In 2006, she negotiated this bill on behalf of Democrats with former Republican Senator Joe Scarnati. She said she agreed not to include an annual cost of living enhance because he warned he would never get enough votes.
“I said, ‘Joe, I hope in 10 years I’m not here begging for minimum wage,’” she said. “Today is twenty.”
In 2009, Pennsylvania’s minimum wage was raised again to reach the novel federal minimum of $7.25, which remains at its current level.
The debate about raising it also moved into the discussion about the upcoming state budget.
In his February budget speech, Gov. Josh Shapiro called to raise the price to $15.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, which was also the Legislature’s constitutional deadline to adopt a spending plan, House Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R-Bedford) said lawmakers might be able to find an agreement to raise the minimum wage, but not as part of a budget deal.
“We often say that the budget is a reflection of values,” Tartaglione said. “If that’s true, then a budget that leaves minimum wage workers in place is a statement that their work doesn’t count at the same level as everyone else’s. I don’t accept that. I don’t believe the people of PA accept it either.
At the end of her speech, she added: “I hope you can live with your conscience if we leave here without doing anything.”
