The National Restaurant Association opposed the minimum-wage increases. The association contended that relatively few minimum-wage workers are trying to support families and that such legislation would be too expensive for restaurants.

The National Federation of Independent Business is an advocacy group based in Nashville, Tennessee, that represents the interests of small businesses. The federation opposes efforts to raise the minimum wage, saying such measures have ripple effects on the economy and can hurt entry-level workers. Email through the website.

Responsible Wealth is a Boston-based network of businesspeople, investors and affluent Americans – drawn from among the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, its Web site says. Responsible Wealth pushes for a higher minimum wage and asks business people to sign a covenant promising to pay their employees at least $8 an hour. Mike Lapham is project director. Mike […]

Paul Sonn is legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project. He has worked at designing and implementing living-wage policies in low-wage industries for more than a decade. He founded and co-directed the Economic Justice Project at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, which merged with NELP in 2008.

Stephanie Luce is an assistant professor of labor studies at the City University of New York. She has conducted numerous studies on the effects of minimum-wage laws in the U.S. and is the author of Fighting for a Living Wage, which found that communities that successfully passed living-wage laws haven’t always had as much success in implementing […]

Harry J. Holzer is a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, senior fellow at the Urban Institute and nonresident senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. He wrote the December 2008 Brookings report “Living Wage Laws: How Much Do (Can) They Matter?”

Jared Bernstein is Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist and economic policy adviser. Before taking that post, Bernstein was director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He is the author of All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy.

Read a Jan. 15, 2006, New York Times Magazine story about living wage legislation.

Read a May 1, 2006, Wall Street Journal story analyzing the politics of minimum-wage campaigns – and the effort by some to portray it as an issue of moral values.