NEW ORLEANS – On March 17, LCMC Health announced that they were raising the minimum wage of their employees to $15 an hour, a 30 percent increase for around two percent of employees; mostly support roles and operations specialists that make up around 400 employees. While no state law mandates a Louisiana minimum wage, the current rate has remained stagnant at the federally-required level of $7.25 an hour since 2009, the efforts of workers’ rights groups like Step Up Louisiana are leading a grassroots movement to support an intergenerational and multiracial coalition that can pressure the highest levels of corporate infrastructure to enact real change to not just improve the wages but the lives of people working across the region.
“From rallies to picket lines, Step Up Louisiana has stood behind UMC healthcare workers,” said Step Up Louisiana’s statement announcing the victory. “This wage increase comes as nurses with LCMC Health have been organizing since March of 2023, and qualified RNs continue to voice their concerns and leave their positions due to chronic understaffing and poor working conditions.”
A community-based organization founded in 2017, Step Up Louisiana touts the recent increase in pay for LCMC employees as a major victory for organized workers’ movements and a step in the right direction for leveling the field of equitable pay for those living in New Orleans. Recent successes, beyond the LCMC victory, include the approval of a ‘Worker’s Bill of Rights’ amendment by New Orleans voters in 2024, a largely symbolic gesture still supported by 80 percent of voters city-wide, along with a growing movement to improve the safety standards for workers at dollar stores across the state. Their work has received national attention, as referenced on John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” in 2024 and covered on Bloomberg Business Week cover story in 2023, and is just one of many community-based entities fighting to improve the bottom lines and the very lives of Louisiana residents.
Wage disparity has only increased as inflation skyrockets in recent years, affecting not just the price at the pump or the grocery line but the life expectancy of whole communities. Data from the United States Small-area Life Expectancy Project (USALEEP) released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers a staggering perspective on the life expectancy of New Orleans residents based on their neighborhood, with the highest percentage of neighborhoods expecting to live over 82 years on average, and the lowest percentage of residents expecting to live less than 71 years. Questions about the equity of minimum wage laws in Louisiana are nothing new, and efforts to balance the scales have recently been gaining headway with lawmakers in Baton Rouge. Created as a Great Depression-era measure to fend off unsafe working conditions and worker exploitation, the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, has been amended over 20 times in the near century since its passage, with increases in rate becoming rarer during the 1980’s. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the purpose of the Act has long lost its luster as without any legal requirement to update it’s rate for rising prices, “the real value of the federal minimum wage has gradually declined, reaching a 66-year low in 2023, where it is now worth 42% less than its highest point in 1968.” Louisiana is one of 18 states, many also based in the South, that have never passed a statewide minimum wage rate and instead retain the federally mandated floor of $7.25/hour. The recently announced Senate Bill 230, proposed by Senator Regina Barrow, would increase Louisiana’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.25 per hour, a constitutional amendment that could possibly go before voters statewide in November 2026.
While the success of this bill is yet to be seen, and faces an uphill battle against a Republican-heavy Senate, the efforts of organizations like Step Up Louisiana are making groundswell strides to make sure that all Louisiana workers are protected and paid as a foundational byproduct of those oldest of rights, that of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
