Rhode Island's ​economy works best when all working women and men are able to support their families and cover their basic needs like food, healthcare, rent, and transportation. But because of low wages and unfair hiring and compensation practices, hardworking Rhode Islanders, especially women and people of color, are falling behind. It's not right.

In Rhode Island, a woman working full time still makes approximately 86 cents to the dollar that her male counterpart makes. Women of color are even more deeply affected. When you add practices like requiring people to list their salary history on applications and policies that prevent people from talking about their compensation, the gap grows even worse. It's not a problem just for one job; this can affect a person's potential earnings for their entire career.

Rhode Islanders working full time earning the current minimum wage of $10.50 an hour make only $21,840 a year -- that's hardly enough to keep up with rising rents, utilities and the costs of supporting a family. By gradually raising the minimum wage, we can do two things: we can make sure people are earning enough to support themselves, and we can begin to close the pay equity gap where it starts, among low wage earners.

That's why we are supporting a package of legislation aimed at putting an end to unfair practices that keep workers from earning what they are worth, and legislation that gradually increases the minimum wage to $15 an hour.