The minimum wage in Virginia is $7.25 an hour, among the lowest in the nation. But, that might be changing soon.

Michael Pope reports.

Starting this summer, the minimum wage in Virginia might go up to $10 an hour, and eventually go up to $15 an hour two years from now.

That’s a bill introduced by state Senator Rosslyn Dance, a Democrat from Petersburg. Her bill passed a Senate panel with bipartisan support after home health care worker Thomasine Wilson testified in favor.

“If you go to the store, you see things cost more. You can’t go to the store with $15,000 and provide for a family with children, husband, wife, kids — even a single person. I can’t manage by myself with the money that’s being paid now, and I don’t want to work three or four jobs.”

Senator Lionell Spruill of Chesapeake also got a bill out of committee that repeals old Jim Crow language. Language that creates exemptions to the minimum wage for low-wage jobs like shoeshine boys, ushers and doormen.

Here’s Democratic Senator Dick Saslaw asking a business leader about her opposition to the bill.

"You don’t think those people should make the minimum wage. You think they should be paid a lot less.”

“That’s not what I have said.”

That’s Nicole Riley with the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

“I have said that my only concern is what this could become down the road.

“What could it become?”

“There could be an amendment that deals with raising Virginia’s minimum wage, which that we have opposed.”

Now that Senator Dance’s bill to increase the minimum wage will be heading to the Senate floor, business groups aligned against the effort will be lobbying hard to prevent it from going to the governor’s desk.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.