MINIMUM WAGE HIKE ADVANCES : $5.15 RATE PASSES EASILY IN HOUSE.

Byline: Adam Clymer The New York Times

After eight weeks of Democratic pressure, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour in two steps over 13 months.

The final vote was 281-144, with 93 Republicans joining 187 Democrats and one independent in favor, and six Democrats and 138 Republicans opposed.

The vote was clearly the Democrats' biggest victory since Republicans took over the House in 1995. But it was made possible only by election-year divisions among the Republican majority. Speaker Newt Gingrich, concerned about a damaging political issue, clearly wanted the bill passed, though he said nothing publicly. But Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader, spoke and voted against the bill.

Forty-three Republicans broke with Armey on a crucial earlier vote that made passage of the bill possible. The House defeated a Republican proposal to exempt certain small businesses, which overall employ more than 10 million workers, from giving the raise to their current workers. Nor would they have had to give future employees any minimum wage at all or pay them overtime.

That measure was defeated 229-196, after Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., warned that the exemption was ``a killer amendment'' that if adopted would cause the wage bill itself to be defeated. Rep. Marge Roukema, R-N.J., called it ``a poison pill.''

Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Senate sponsor of the wage increase, said the House action would give the bill greater momentum in the Senate, where Republicans have blocked its consideration and Democrats have filibustered one bill after another to try to force action. ``We'll see expanded Republican support on this side, too,'' he predicted. ``We look forward to the battle.''

If the measure comes to a vote, there is a clear majority in the Senate in favor of raising the minimum wage, which President Clinton has been campaigning for energetically.

The bill passed by the House would raise the hourly minimum wage to $4.75 on July 1 and to $5.15 a year later. But it would allow employers to pay new hires under 20 years old $4.25 for the first 90 days.

And the new minimum wage would not require restaurant owners to increase the wages of workers who receive tips, who can be paid $2.13 an hour now if tips bring their wages up to $4.25. In the future, their wages could remain at $2.13, so long as tips would bring their wages to $5.15. That provision, which Kennedy called ``offensive,'' may not survive in the Senate.

The wage issue has served the Democrats well since they raised it two months ago. They raised it first as part of an effort to define what they were for, after some months of gaining in the polls by stressing what they opposed: Republican spending plans for Medicare and education.

To the Democrats' surprise, Republicans let the issue fester. In the Senate, Democrats reveled in the opportunity to use it to embarrass Bob Dole, the Republican leader and his party's presumptive presidential nominee. On Thursday, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the minority leader, said, ``If they want an issue, we'll gladly take this all the way through the election.''

In the House, Democrats forced five procedural votes in failed efforts to bring the measure up. But those votes provided fodder for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which used them in TV ads against vulnerable Republicans. So while Armey was promising to fight the measure ``with every fiber of my being,'' Gingrich began telling Republicans like Shays that they would get a vote.

Although Gingrich voted to increase the minimum wage in 1989, the last time it was raised, he says he believes that increases in the minimum wage cost jobs. But at the same time, he apparently recognizes that opposition to an increase also could cost jobs - those of House Republicans in tough districts.

Armey spoke eloquently on the issue Thursday. ``Study after study demonstrates that we have these perverse employment effects where that entry-level job for the most needy worker in America just goes away'' when the minimum wage is raised, he insisted. ``There is no doubt about that.''

Acknowledging that the increase probably would pass, the Texan said, ``We may, in fact, entertain ourselves and console ourselves that somehow or another we will never see those people who become the broken eggs in the omelet of self-satisfaction that we make for ourselves as we appease the pressures of American union leaders in Washington, D.C., in total disregard for real people in their real lives in the real world.

``Let me leave you with this thought,'' he concluded. ``When you walk into the city in the middle of July and you see the youngster idle because the job they thought they were going to have is not there for them this summer, and you look in the face of that young high school or college student and you say, `I feel your pain,' that is only just. You caused it.''

Democrats disagreed sharply. ``If you want Mom off welfare, make the job pay,'' said Rep. Pat Williams of Montana.

``Extreme Republicans believe in reducing the minimum wage,'' charged Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.

And Rep. Jack Quinn of New York, who led the Republican faction supporting the wage increase, said, ``People who work a 40-hour week ought to earn a living wage.''

Armey's speech came in defense of the proposal to exempt businesses with annual sales of $500,000 or less from the higher minimum wage and to exempt all new employees from any minimum wage at all and from the requirement that after 40 hours of work they be paid time and a half.

Rep. Bill Goodling, the Pennsylvania Republican who wrote the proposal, insisted it would only apply to small ``Mom and Pop'' enterprises. He scoffed when Democrats contended it might hurt 3 million or even 10 million workers. Rep. Bill Barrett, R-Neb., called it ``the only life preserver for struggling small business and low-skilled labor.''

But Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan, the Democratic whip, argued, ``The American people do not want us to return to the sweatshop days of old.''

HOW THEY VOTED Here is how California representatives voted Thursday in the 281-144 roll call by which the House voted to approve a labor bill that includes an increase in the minimum wage. A ``yes'' vote is a vote to approve the bill, which would increase the minimum, over 13 months, by 90 cents from the current $4.25 an hour.

REPUBLICANS: Baker, No; Bilbray, Yes; Bono, No; Calvert, No; Campbell, No; Cox, No; Cunningham, No; Doolittle, No; Dornan, No; Dreier, No; Gallegly, Yes; Herger, No; Horn, Yes; Hunter, No; Kim, No; Lewis, Yes; McKeon, No; Moorhead, Yes; Packard, No; Pombo, No; Radanovich, No; Riggs, Yes; Rohrabacher, No; Royce, No; Seastrand, No; Thomas, No.

DEMOCRATS: Becerra, (no vote cast); Beilenson, Yes; Berman, Yes; Brown, Yes; Condit, Yes; Dellums, Yes; Dixon, Yes; Dooley, Yes; Eshoo, Yes; Farr, Yes; Fazio, Yes; Filner, Yes; Harman, Yes; Lantos, Yes; Lofgren, Yes; Martinez, Yes; Matsui, Yes; Millender-McDonald, Yes; Miller, Yes; Pelosi, Yes; Roybal-Allard, Yes; Stark, Yes; Torres, Yes; Waters, Yes; Waxman, Yes; Woolsey, Yes.

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