Labor Day packs a pay raise  By Alice Ann Love Associated Press
Published:  On Monday, the federal minimum wage increases to
$5.15 an hour as part of the second phase of an increase
approved by Congress last summer. The first phase last fall
lifted the nation's standard wage for hourly workers to $4.75
from $4.25, where it had sat unchanged more than five years.
"It helps," said Maria Christina Lopez, a 38-year-old mother of
five who has worked six months at a Dairy Queen in Earth, Texas,
"because bills and everything are going up."  And the change
will affect more people than just the estimated 6.4 million
workers who now make below $5.15 an hour.  "We have to raise
(all wages) to keep them in line," said Ed Guerra, Lopez's boss,
who runs Dairy Queen restaurants throughout West Texas. "We
can't pay a crew leader the same as a (regular) employee."
Overall, about 10 million minimum wage workers will have
benefited from either last fall's increase or Monday's increase,
the Labor Department says. Some people l