Wage

They weren't allowed to be at work, but now they're paying for being absent. Some administrative employees who were barred from the Johns Hopkins at Keswick complex in North Baltimore twice in the last two weeks because the buildings were closed due to outbreaks of illness are being told to use personal time or vacation days to make up for the time missed, Johns Hopkins officials confirmed Wednesday. Others were working overtime to catch up. For example, the majority of 284 patient financial services employees who work on the fifth floor of the Keswick complex's south building worked overtime hours three days last week - including Saturday - to make up for the day they had missed.

I am writing in response to The Sun's editorial regarding septic tank limits, "Plowing old ground" (Feb. 15). I have introduced legislation to repeal the Sustainable Growth and Agricultural Preservation Act of 2012, the law requiring counties to adopt a tier system thus limiting new residential developments with septic systems. The state has told the counties they must either adopt the tier system established by the state or limit new major subdivisions, currently six or more housing units in Queen Anne's County, to land on public sewer.

If Robert Reich is looking for "baloney" in the debate over minimum wage hikes, he should start with his recent commentary in The Sun ("The minimum wage and the meaning of a decent society," Feb. 20). Contrary to Mr. Reich's claim, the academic and economic consensus that wage hikes lead to job losses is overwhelming and based on far more than just vague claims. A nonpartisan review conducted by David Neumark (UC-Irvine) and William Wascher (Federal Reserve) concluded that 85 percent of credible economic studies on minimum wage increases from the last two decades point to job loss following a wage hike.

Some members of the Rev. David Carl Olson's congregation are homeless. A few work minimum-wage jobs, he said, but they still cannot afford to leave shelters. His faith calls him to live in a world with "profoundly more justice," said Olson, who oversees First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, and that starts with increasing wages. Olson spoke to about 25 people gathered to protest the corporate profits of low-wage employers Thursday morning at a Walmart store in Catonsville. Demonstrators chanted "Raise the minimum wage!"

Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 should be a no-brainer. Republicans say it will cause employers to shed jobs, but that's baloney. Employers won't outsource the jobs abroad or substitute machines for them, because jobs at this low level of pay are all in the local personal-service sector (retail, restaurant, hotel and so on), where employers pass on small wage hikes to customers as pennies more on their bills. States that have set their minimum wage closer to $9 than the current federal minimum don't have higher rates of unemployment than do states still at the federal minimum.

Food and retail workers at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport protested working conditions on Wednesday and attempted to deliver a proposed "Bill of Rights," to AirMall USA, BWI's concessions manager. Unite Here, a labor union that represents hospitality workers in Baltimore and elsewhere and is working to organize the airport concessions workers, said the private management company has benefited from higher passenger traffic while workers struggle with low wages and lack of health care access.

The latest report from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute makes a compelling case for raising the minimum wage, nationally and in Maryland. Legislation introduced last week in Annapolis would raise the minimum from $7.25 an hour to $10 in two years and keep it indexed to inflation - a move that EPI says will not only put $778 million more in the pockets of Maryland workers but create 4,280 new jobs from increased economic activity generated by the higher pay. We know that the reaction to many in the business community will be, as it has always been, unyielding opposition.

Behind the counter at a convenience store in Princess Anne, Elvira Orellana worked 72 hours a week, making sandwiches, cleaning the kitchen and ordering the ingredients to prepare oxtail, curry chicken and cheese steaks. Her employer paid her $648 a week — $324 less than she was owed under laws that require that workers earn time and a half for clocking more than 40 hours a week. When she complained, Orellana said, her boss threatened to cut her wages and then fired her. Orellana's case, which she won in federal court, illustrates a problem that historically has been more pronounced in the wake of recessions.

In his recent Sun op-ed in favor of a higher minimum wage, Baltimore Rev. David Carl Olson cites an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute to claim that a wage hike will create jobs ("Maryland Must Raise its Minimum Wage," January 22). While I don't doubt the reverend's good intentions, readers shouldn't take the quality of his evidence on faith. The institute he cites has cooked up a "model" that only shows job creation from a minimum wage increase. Even a $50 minimum wage would register as job-boosting stimulus, despite the fact that it would force hundreds of Maryland businesses to close their doors.

Two Democratic lawmakers are pushing a plan to increase Maryland's minimum wage to $10 an hour, one of the highest rates in the country. Huddled in Tuesday's sub-freezing temperatures, the lawmakers and about 40 demonstrators holding "hard work deserves fair pay" signs contended that the current $7.25 hourly minimum wage is not enough for full-time workers to support themselves. Sen. Majority Leader Robert J. Garagiola, a Montgomery County Democrat, said the increase would be phased in by 2015.