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U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin, right, listen to Boloco founder John Pepper, left, speak at a roundtable on the minimum wage at Boloco in Boston on Feb. 10, 2014.

(Shira Schoenberg for The Republican/MassLive.com)

BOSTON — With bills to raise the minimum wage under consideration in Washington, D.C., and on Beacon Hill, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, joined U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, in Boston on Monday to call for a minimum wage increase on both a state and federal level.

“(Raising the minimum wage) means nobody who works full time should live in poverty,” Warren said. “It means that workers who get out there and do the jobs that keep us fed, do the jobs that need to be done in this country, can raise their families and build some economic security. It also means they can come and spend money in businesses. They can be part of this economy.”

The Massachusetts Senate already passed a bill that would raise the state minimum wage from $8 to $11 an hour over three years, which would make it the highest minimum wage in the country. The bill is still pending in the House, where leaders have been talking about tying a minimum wage increase to reform of the state’s unemployment insurance system. Businesses generally oppose the minimum wage increase, but support reforming unemployment insurance to lower their costs.

If the bill does not become law, activists have been working to get a question on the November 2014 ballot. The ballot initiative would raise the state minimum wage from $8 to $10.50 an hour over two years and then index it to inflation. It would raise the minimum wage for tipped workers from $2.63 an hour to $6.30 an hour. Warren is the lead petitioner on that effort, which is also supported by Massachusetts’ other U.S. Senator, Democrat Ed Markey. The group Raise Up Massachusetts collected 280,000 signatures for the ballot initiative this fall.

Federally, congressional Democrats, including Warren and Durbin, are pushing for a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, phased in over three years. Durbin said Democrats need at least five Republican senators to join them in order to pass the federal minimum wage bill in the Senate. He said he “cant tell” yet if he will get that support.

“This used to be a bipartisan issue,” Durbin said. “Sadly, whether it’s unemployment benefits or minimum wage, it’s become too partisan.”

Speaking at Boloco in Boston – where restaurant workers are paid a minimum of $9 an hour – Warren and Durbin argued that increasing the minimum wage helps workers as well as businesses, since employees who earn more spend the money in the local economy.

“The minimum wage is a labor standard,” Durbin said. “It says if you’re going to work in America, you will not be impoverished. We’ll make sure you have the minimum necessary to get by.”

Warren, speaking to reporters after the event, said if the minimum wage in the 1960s had been pegged to productivity, it would currently be $22 an hour. “I say that as a reminder that workers’ share of the increasing wealth of this country has shrunk, and that’s fundamentally wrong,” Warren said.

Several low-wage workers also spoke at the roundtable, including an immigrant from South Sudan, a teenager and a tipped restaurant worker. Lawrence McCain, 51, used to work as a machinist but now works at Logan Airport cleaning airplanes for $8.33 an hour. He was hired into a full-time job, but his hours were cut, and most of his money goes toward rent and transportation. “I’m working to stay poor,” McCain said.

Steven Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, which supports the minimum wage increase, pointed out that the state minimum wage was last raised in 2008. “A job should be a way out of poverty, not another form of poverty,” Tolman said.

Although a representative of a progressive business owners’ group spoke at the roundtable, minimum wage increases are typically opposed by business groups.

Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said a minimum wage increase means higher costs for businesses and therefore the ability to hire fewer employees or pay for fewer hours. While supporters of raising the minimum wage tend to focus on minimum wage earners working full-time as family breadwinners, opponents often focus on the teenagers looking for work experience. “Its unfortunate that sometimes our elected leaders don’t really fully understand the economic implications, that you end up cutting down on certainly jobs for teenagers,” Hurst said.

“If you’re a small business ... if the state raises your cost of labor, yet your sales do not increase, you’ve got a problem,” Hurst said. “All you can really do is lower your labor, the amount of people you employ, or the hours.”

Hurst said he is most opposed to a state-level increase, since it puts Massachusetts businesses at a competitive disadvantage compared to businesses in neighboring states or to other U.S. companies that do business online.