Johns Hopkins increasing minimum wage to $15

Johns Hopkins University on Thursday announced plans to increase the minimum wage at the school and health system to $15 an hour.

The boost, according to a press release, will affect more than 6,000 Maryland employees. The university and health system together are the largest private employer in the state, they say.

The pay raise will go into effect on July 1 for university employees and Jan. 1 for employees of the health system.

“We take seriously our responsibility to serve as an engine of opportunity in Baltimore and every community we serve,” Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels said in a statement.

“Paying higher wages to employees supports both them and the local communities in which we live and work,” Daniels added.

The increase, the release said, is part of Johns Hopkins’s commitment to 2019 legislation in Maryland, which called for a phased approach to achieving a statewide minimum wage.

According to the institutions, they will reach this goal four years before Maryland’s law requires.

Additionally, the $15 minimum wage will go into effect at Johns Hopkins’s All Children’s Hospital in Florida.

All employees and temporary workers, student workers and contract workers who work full-time on campus will be eligible for the minimum wage, according to the institutions.

The push for a federal minimum wage increase hit a wall in March when the Senate rejected a proposal to boost pay to $15 an hour in a 58 to 42 vote.

This came after the House, in its sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package, passed an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $7.25 rate.