WASHINGTON (PAI)--By a 52-46 margin, the GOP-run Senate voted June 20 to raise the minimum wage. But the measure needed 60 votes to pass, so it didn't.

The latest attempt, like the others, was backed by organized labor and pushed by by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). He proposed raising the minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Seven Republicans voted for it and the rest did not.

Kennedy tried to insert the hike into a defense bill. It marked his third try in the last three years to raise the wage, but the first in which he got a majority. The wage has not been raised since 1997. Kennedy's bill needed a super-majority to overcome a potential filibuster and parliamentary rules this time. Aides said he would try again later this year.

(Pressured by a petition drive by organized labor, the Michigan legislature passed a minimum wage increase for our state earlier this year).

The vote "clearly demonstrates the Republican leadership cannot stand in the way of fairness for America's low wage workers forever," Kennedy said. "We have been fighting for nearly a decade to give minimum wage workers a fair raise. And today, a majority of the Senate now agrees with the majority of Americans that an increase in the minimum wage is long overdue.

"This battle will continue…until at long last justice is done. It's time for the Republican leadership to stop its obstruction and get out of the way," he declared. Polls show 3-to-1 margins, or better, including most Republicans, favor a raise.

Kennedy accused the GOP of being "out of touch with reality" of U.S. workers, saying the opposition "caves to industry lobbyists and special interests." The AFL-CIO and Change to Win, which both lobbied for the hike, agreed.

"It is simply scandalous that…Senate Republicans still refuse to legislate a decent increase in the minimum wage, and then have the nerve to try to sneak in 'poison pill' provisions that weaken and eliminate the wage and hour protections workers currently have," AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said after the vote.

"Republican leaders tried to don a political fig leaf with a smaller increase, but could not resist adding measures that would have stripped overtime and minimum wage protections from more than seven million workers and undermined the 40-hour week. Fortunately, that cynical move failed, too," Sweeney added. The GOP hike, to $6.25 in two stages over 24 months, lost 52-43.

"While this increase won't exactly make work pay for millions toiling at the bottom, it will help a lot," CTW said in a legislative alert to its seven unions before the vote. "For a low-income family of three, a raise to $7.25 an hour would amount to just $15,080 in pay a year.

"That would still keep them below the federal poverty line, but it's worth eight months of rent, 15 months of groceries, or two years of health care to them. Most of those who would benefit are adults, not teenagers seeking some spending money," CTW added, countering a common argument of the raise's most-vigorous foes, the lobbies for restaurants and retailers.

At least Kennedy got a vote. Over in the GOP-run House, seven Republicans joined all the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee to attach a minimum wage hike, from $5.15 to $6.25, to the Labor Department's money bill. But the 32-25 tally did not convince the House's GOP leaders. They said the amendment broke parliamentary rules and vowed to strip it from the bill, thus preventing a full House vote.