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State Economies Do Well After Minimum Wage Boosts |
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The economic sky hasn’t fallen in states where the minimum wage has increased. It won’t fall in Colorado either if voters there approve a ballot initiative (known as Amendment 42) to increase the Rocky Mountain State’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.85, several economists told state reporters there this week.
Business groups, especially the restaurant industry, always predict dire consequences—layoffs or reduced hiring, lower profits and overall doom—whenever a minimum wage increase is discussed.
But the economists point to Oregon, Washington, New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin where the minimum wage has gone up and business is doing just fine.
Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, notes that not only has Oregon raised the minimum wage but linked it to inflation to protect its buying power. Disaster for restaurants, right? Not according to the National Restaurant Association, which Sheketoff says is projecting increased sales and job growth there over the next decade.
(Click here and here for more stories that debunk the disaster myth.)
Colorado is just one of many states in the past year where activists in the AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise campaign, working with community allies such as ACORN, have won minimum wage increases though legislation or won overwhelming public support to qualify for a place on the November ballot.
Meanwhile, a Denver TV station this week hosted a debate between wage-increase advocates Leslie Moody, president of the Denver Area Labor Federation, and Linda Meric, executive director of the working women’s activist group 9to5, and opponents, Jan Rigg and Eric Morgan of the business-backed anti-wage group Respect Colorado’s Constitution.
When asked why voters should approve a state minimum wage increase, Meric puts it simply and succinctly:
Hard work deserves fair pay. Colorado’s minimum wage hasn’t gone up in almost 10 years, and that means more hardworking Colorado families are living in poverty.
Given a chance to lay out the case against a wage increase, Morgan could only reply that the approach was all wrong and for some reason wasn’t fair to towns outside of Denver:
The short answer is this is an irresponsible approach to raising the minimum wage….It’s not fair to small-business owners in Wray or Pueblo or Grand Junction.
In response to the usual argument that most people making the minimum wage are young and don’t support families, Meric points out:
Seventy percent of minimum-wage earners in Colorado are adults over age 20, and fully half the families that would be affected by a minimum-wage increase are relying on a minimum-wage worker’s earnings for all of their weekly earnings. So we really are talking about people who are trying to make ends meet on these low wages and trying to support families on these low wages.
Amendment 42 puts the minimum wage increase into the state constitution and ties it to inflation to protect its buying power.
The reason for including the measure in the constitution, Moody says, is clear:
We haven’t been able to trust politicians to keep the minimum wage at a fair level, and without a constitutional amendment, we can’t trust they won’t cave in to pressure from well-funded business groups to repeal or reduce the minimum wage the citizens of Colorado vote on in November.
Come November, we’ll see who wins the final minimum wage debate in Colorado and in five other state where the issue is on the ballot. Arizona, Ohio, Montana, Nevada and Missouri.
Voters in all but Missouri can cast early ballots. Click here to learn more about early voting in those states.
BTW, still no word from U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) if he’s made a decision on Arizona’s wage initiative. Claims he can’t make up his mind without reading it first—it is real rocket science, $5.15 an hour or $6.85 an hour—so wage advocates delivered him a copy this week.
Check out the AFL-CIO Political Action Center at www.votenov7.org, where you can register to vote, learn about working family issues and download candidate comparison fliers.
If you’re not a union member, join Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, and join the fight for good jobs, affordable health care, quality education and secure retirements.
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[...] Now comes yet another story that points to evidence that states that boost their minimum wages actually see improved economic prospects. Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, notes that not only has Oregon raised the minimum wage but linked it to inflation to protect its buying power. Disaster for restaurants, right? Not according to the National Restaurant Association, which Sheketoff says is projecting increased sales and job growth there over the next decade. [...]