Amid the Fight for $15 movement, which today prompted a rally for a $15 minimum wage bill in Baltimore and demonstrations in Detroit and elsewhere that led to scores of arrests, Baltimore City government is making this small change:

It will raise the pay floor for contracts it issues to private vendors from $11.65 to $11.66 an hour.

The Board of Estimates, headed by outgoing Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, is set to approve the one cent hike tomorrow.

The rate will impact the wages paid to hundreds of people who are employed by private contractors working for the city, starting next July. It will not, however, affect privately owned fast-food, day-care, medical and transportation companies that can currently pay as little as $8.75 an hour in Maryland.

The new rate on Baltimore government contracts was determined by a formula based on what the U.S. Census Bureau considers the “poverty threshold level” for a family of four.

The city takes the Census calculation and divides it by 2,080 hours – that’s a 40-hour week for 52 weeks, no holidays or vacations included – to determine the so-called “living wage” for service contracts issued by local government.

At the current income threshold of $24,257 a year for a family of four, the rate came out to $11.66.

That rate has been slowly rising in recent years, tracking the rate of inflation. In 2011, the living wage for Baltimore contracts was $10.59 an hour. In 2013, it had increased to $11.07 an hour.

A number of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, have set a $15 minimum wage. Last June, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser signed a $15 wage bill that will go into effect in 2020.

In neighboring Montgomery County, the county council has been mulling over a similar wage minimum over the objections of Ike Leggett, the county executive, who said the rate would put local businesses at a competitive disadvantage to other  jurisdictions.

Opponents: Would Hurt Business

The same argument was used by Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who mustered a one-vote majority that sent a $15 minimum wage bill back to committee last August.

Young argued that any wage higher than $11.50-an-hour would hurt local business and lead to restaurant and other closings.

To lessen the impact on small business, the bill’s chief sponsor, Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, exempted companies with fewer than 25 workers and under $500,000 in gross annual revenues from paying the proposed $15-an-hour wage.

The Greater Baltimore Committee and other groups still opposed the measure.

Clarke vowed to reintroduce the bill after the new Council takes office next week – including freshman members who have vowed to support it.

As currently written, the bill would not reach the $15-an-hour level until July 2022.

Under Clarke’s proposal, the rate would continue increase based on the cost of living. Her bill also calls for increased pay for tipped workers, who currently earn $3.63 per hour.

“Sometimes I Don’t Eat at All”

In Baltimore, at the Blue Point Health Care Center on West Belvedere Avenue, nursing home workers and others rallied for passage of the $15 minimum wage measure. The current pay they receive, they said, leaves them at poverty level.

“We work hard every day. There’s a lot of stress and short staffing. It’s a very physical job. I truly don’t feel our current wages reflect all that we do,” said Debbie Daughton, who has been a geriatric nursing assistant at Genesis Perring Parkway for 33 years.

“I’m 63 years old. I go to work hurting every day. My back hurts, my knees hurt,” Daughton said. “I’m tired, but if I retired today, I wouldn’t make enough on Social Security to pay my bills after 33 years of service.”

“I work full-time and earn $13 per hour. My first check goes to rent, and my second check has to cover BGE, my medication, Comcast, telephone, transportation and other expenses,” said Joy Stewart-Phillips, a GNA/CNA who has worked at the Homewood Center nursing home in Baltimore for four years.

“After that, there’s not much left. How am I supposed to eat? I try to make the best of it, but I’m eating low-quality food, and sometimes I don’t eat at all.”

In other demonstrations today, protesters in Detroit linked arms in front of a McDonald’s restaurant and sat down in the street. About 40 arrests were made by police.

There were picketers at Newark International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Boston’s Logan Airport, as well as sizable demonstrations in New York City and Cambridge, Mass.