Connecticut the 7th state to raise minimum wage to $15

May 29 (UPI) -- Connecticut has become the latest state to hike its minimum wage -- raising it to $15 per hour.

The state's legislature passed a bill to raise the hourly wage to $15 by 2023 and Gov. Ned Lamont signed it Tuesday. The state minimum wage will rise to $11 in October, and step up to $15 over the next four years. Connecticut's minimum hourly wage is now $10.10.

"We tried and failed a couple of times, and this year we got it done," Lamont said.

Workers across the state celebrated the end of a fight that started several years ago.

"When fast-food workers walked off the job nearly seven years ago demanding $15 and a union, nobody thought we had a chance," said fast food worker Joseph Franklin. "Our movement is gaining momentum."

The number of states that have committed to $15 has doubled so far this year. Connecticut will be the seventh to reach that threshold; the others are California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Some local municipalities also require a $15 minimum wage, such as San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., and Washington, D.C.

The minimum wage at the federal level remains $7.25, where it was last moved in 2009. The Democratic-controlled House is working on federal minimum wage legislation, but some experts doubt its chances in the Republican-held Senate.

The National Federation of Independent Business said hiking the minimum wage stunts economic growth and causes job losses. Christopher Carlozzi, NFIB's state director for Massachusetts, said those who often are shut out include younger and lesser-skilled workers. He cited as an example Boston-area restaurants that have closed and cut hours since the state passed an increase last year.

"You're already seeing almost immediately, even at $12 an hour, some small businesses saying, 'We can't afford this,'" Carlozzi said.

New Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she's already proposed raising the city's minimum wage to $15 by 2021.

She said "deliberate policy choices made in decades past by people in power in this town" have impoverished much of the South and West sides.

"The legacies of racial discrimination and race- and class-based inequity are tied to the culture of corruption that has favored the clouted and wealthy," she said. "And these legacies, intertwined, lie at the root of every problem my administration faces today."