Big Electoral Stick Helps Michigan Wage Increase

by Mike Hall, Mar 10, 2006

Sometimes if you carry a big stick, right out there in plain sight for everyone to see, you don’t have you use it. Michigan working families found that out March 9, when in a startling change of heart the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to raise the state’s minimum wage by 44 percent by mid-2008.

Last year, the Michigan AFL-CIO and community allies, including ACORN, faith groups and others, launched a huge grassroots campaign to put on this fall’s ballot a constitutional amendment to raise the state’s $5.15 an hour minimum wage for the first time in nine years.

The state’s unions led the fight in 2002 to put working-family friendly Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) into office, replacing John Engler (R), who had been a major roadblock to boosting the minimum wage. The state legislature, however, is still controlled by Republicans who oppose the minimum wage increase.

“We’d pretty much given up on the legislature,” says Mary Holbrook, Michigan AFL-CIO information systems director.

So they turned to the ballot strategy. Support for the minimum wage amendment grew so popular—74 percent of voters backed the measure, according to polls—that lawmakers who had long sided with business groups against raising the minimum wage saw a huge electoral stick poised to whack them in November.

“Republicans fear a ballot proposal would guarantee a large Democratic turnout, hurting GOP candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and other offices,” according to The Detroit News.

Score one for the good guys. On March 9, the state Senate ducked a sure November bruising and voted unanimously to raise the state’s minimum wage by 44 percent in three steps to $7.40 an hour by July 2008.

Tammy Pyles, a married 38-year-old mother of three and cashier who earns the minimum wage, told the News:

“I’m all for that. Right now, (my paycheck) only pays for the phone bill, gas for the car and a little groceries. I want it to go through. That would be great and not just for me, but for everyone making a minimum wage. (They should) pass it for all of us making diddly. They make a lot more than we are.”

The state House of Representatives will vote March 14, and with state business groups reluctantly but realistically backing the bill—their buddies could lose their seats with a massive working family turnout—it is expected to pass. Granholm says she will sign it.

The Michigan AFL-CIO and the grassroots groups that are part of the Michigan Needs a Raise Coalition say they are pleased with Senate action. However, they haven’t decided yet if they will reconsider the ballot campaign or continue with it, mainly to ensure the minimum wage will grow with inflation and be protected by the state’s constitution.

Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney says that decision will be made after the House votes.

So far, he says, “We could call it the most successful ballot proposal in history that’s never been voted on.”

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