The House of Representatives approved Bill 2264 on Thursday to increase the minimum wage to $ 8.50 in Puerto Rico and that will benefit private sector employees. This law will take effect immediately after its approval.
The measure of the representative’s responsibility, Joel Franqui Atiles, received amendments to increase from $ 8.25 to $ 8.50 an hour. It also establishes an automatic increase in the minimum wage every three years according to the “Consumer Price Index” published by the Planning Board.
“In Puerto Rico more than 300,000 people occupy a job subject to the minimum wage of $ 7.25 an hour, which is equivalent to an annual wage of $ 15,080 without the established discounts. An increase in the minimum wage is necessary and fair to guarantee that all Puerto Ricans have a better quality of life, ”said Franqui Atiles in a written communication.
The statute provides that as of July 2021, the minimum wage in Puerto Rico will be increased to all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, in English, except for employees of government agencies, public corporations , municipalities, and the Judicial and Legislative Branches. It also provides that by July 2024, any business whose sales volume exceeds $ 3 million must increase the minimum wage at a rate of $ 9.50 an hour.
Franqui Atiles explained that in the event that the federal minimum wage is greater than the state minimum wage, the federal minimum wage will prevail.
“With this measure we seek to do justice to those private sector employees who remain stagnant at $ 7.25 an hour,” the representative reiterated. He recalled that in 2018, by means of an executive order from former Governor Ricardo Rosselló, the minimum wage for government employees was increased to $ 8.25 an hour.
As exposed in the measure, more than twenty states increased the minimum wage in early 2019.
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