Birmingham wage rally July 14, 2015

Several dozen people rallied outside Birmingham City Hall after the Tuesday, July 14, city council meeting to urge a minimum wage increase to $10.10 an hour. (Kelsey Stein | kstein@al.com)

( )

Update as of 3:34 p.m. Wednesday:

A bill intended to block Birmingham and other cities from passing their own minimum wages won approval in a state Senate committee today and could get final passage in the Senate as early as Thursday.

____________________________________________________________________

Birmingham soon will have one of the highest minimum wages in the South.

The city council voted Tuesday morning to almost immediately implement a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour.

Birmingham's increase was initially set to happen incrementally, to $8.50 an hour in July 2016 and then to $10.10 a year later. This month, the council passed an ordinance to move the increase up to March 1 before Tuesday's vote on an even earlier date, Feb. 24.

Though the change is dated Feb. 24, it still must be signed by the mayor and published publicly before it goes into effect and can be enforced.

The ordinance discussed at Tuesday's meeting was submitted by Council President Johnathan Austin. It passed with a vote of 6-2.

Austin was joined by council members Steven Hoyt, Marcus Lundy, William Parker, Lashunda Scales and Sheila Tyson voting in favor of the ordinance.

"We need to make sure our citizens are taken care of and that we're making decisions in their best interest," Austin said earlier this week.

Council members Valerie Abbott and Kim Rafferty voted against the change after expressing concerns about potential effects on business owners and the politics of the decision. Council President Pro Tem Jay Roberson was not in the room when the vote was taken.

The immediacy of the vote was spurred by efforts in the state legislature to prevent cities and counties from establishing their own minimum wage standards.

A bill by Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook, passed Feb. 16 in the Alabama House of Representatives with overwhelming support from Republicans. It now awaits committee action in the Senate.

Faulkner has said that the state needs to keep a uniform minimum wage because a patchwork of minimums would cause problems. Democrats oppose the bill, saying it is an overreach by the legislature.

Sen. Jabo Waggoner said Tuesday that the minimum wage bill is a priority for the Senate's Republican Caucus. They hope to pass the bill by Thursday.

The dispute between state and local officials in Alabama over who has the authority to raise the minimum wage is playing out across the country.

Alabama is one of five states - all in the South - that have not set their own minimum wage. Officials in 29 states and at least 31 cities and counties have raised the wage floor above the federal standard.

In states and cities without a local minimum wage, employers are governed by the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, last raised in 2009.

"You have an explosion of local minimum wage laws, and that extends into more conservative states where you have more liberal metropolitan areas," Ken Jacobs, the chairman of U.C. Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education, told The New York Times. "In response to that, the states are taking action."

The Obama administration will do whatever it can to support Birmingham raising its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu said at an event in Birmingham several weeks ago.

Lu led a business roundtable at Buck Mulligan's in Five Points South composed of local government leaders, activists and local workers in support of raising the minimum wage.

"Birmingham is really setting a path," Lu said. "Wherever there is a city or state that wants to take on this fight, we at the Department of Labor and the Obama administration are going to support it."

Meanwhile, several local groups have formed a coalition to organize against Faulkner's bill.

Raise Up Alabama officially launched last week at a rally in Mountain Brook. The coalition was organized to get Birmingham's minimum wage increase implemented though rallies, online action, phone banking, letter writing and community organizing.

The coalition represents workers, clergy and unions. So far, Raise Up Alabama includes Alabama Fight for $15; Greater Birmingham Ministries; Moral Movement Alabama; Engage Alabama; the National Employment Law Project; United Steelworkers District 9; RWDSU Mid-South Council; the Alabama AFL-CIO; and Rev. William Barber, the President of the North Carolina NAACP and the preacher behind Moral Mondays.

Updated at 2:31 p.m. with more background and bill's status in Senate

AL.com staff reporter Mike Cason contributed to this report.