By the Alaska Legislative Digest

A senate committee held hearings Jan. 31 on a bill that would raise the state’s minimum wage and index it to inflation. The proposal, by Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, would set the minimum at $8 per hour or $1 over the federal minimum wage. Alaska’s minimum wage is now $7.15 per hour. The federal minimum wage is set to rise to $7.25 an hour in 2009, which would have Alaska’s rate below the federal minimum for the first time since statehood, Wielechowsk said. The Legislature last raised the minimum wage to its current $7.15 per hour rate in 2003, without indexing.