Now’s the time to rethink state minimum wage
DAN VOELPEL; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Ten years ago, two out of every three of us voted to automatically increase the state’s minimum wage every year.
Then it was $4.90 an hour. Today? $8.55. The highest in the country.
On New Year’s Day – the first day after the worst financial year in the last 40 years – our minimum wage rose 48 cents an hour.
The highest in the country. Does that fact make you proud? Or does it make you shake your head and wonder how our state got so out of whack?
Count me in the second group. We have made it increasingly cost-prohibitive for businesses to hire more people.
Duke Moscrip, the owner of Duke’s Chowder House restaurants, says the latest 48-cent bump will cost his company $50,000 more a year in wages, not counting the additional taxes and benefits he must pay on the higher wage rate.
“It’s a real threat now to our survival,” Moscrip said, especially when the economy has caused many consumers to curtail spending. Among his competitors, The Keg restaurants have closed four locations. The parent company of Black Angus restaurants filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.
“We need relief from these outdated concepts” about the minimum wage, Moscrip said. “You see what it means for us. But for other businesses, some of these mom and pop operations, $8.55 an hour is a lot of money.”
I know. When you make $10, $20, $40 or more an hour, how could you begrudge some poorer soul an extra buck or two? On the surface, it sounds like the right thing to kick the base wage up a notch.
It isn’t. Yet that rationale helped Initiative 688 pass in November 1998 with 66.1 percent of the vote. The Raise the Minimum Wage Act bumps the wage up by the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers.
Somehow we have bought into the misconception that the minimum wage should equal a family wage.
It isn’t. The minimum wage is a work force entry wage, a wage paid for a supplemental income, a wage for someone in the job temporarily rather than a career.
Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, thought she could do something about it.
Since the 1998 initiative, Republicans have tried multiple times, session after session, to introduce bills that would change the minimum wage formula.
This year Evans, the Republican caucus chairwoman, introduced SB 5362. It would freeze the minimum wage at $8.55. The timing seemed right.
“With the economic situation going on in our state and nationally, I don’t think it is going to get better overnight,” she said. “The key right now is to keep our businesses in business so they can employ the people they employ.”
Her bill got assigned Jan. 20 to the Labor, Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee. Committee Chairwoman Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, won’t even give the bill a hearing.
“I have a great relationship with Senator Kohl-Welles,” Parlette said. “I thought I’d at least get a hearing.”
This happens in a blue state with the Democrats firmly at the controls.
If you think the battle over the minimum wage amounts to a penny-ante game, consider this:
• What’s the most searched-for term on the Web site for the Association of Washington Business? “Minimum wage.”
• The Washington Restaurant Association has put the escalating minimum wage near the top of its legislative attack list.
Don Brunell, Association of Washington Business president, wrote on his blog that census data show that “less than 1 percent of workers over 25 are earning the minimum and rather than family heads or full-time workers, they tend to be young single adults, teenagers living at home, or spouses providing a second income.”
And still “politicians are blending minimum wage into a living wage,” Brunell wrote.
“I talk to business owners all the time,” Parlette said. “In some cases, they would like to pay some workers more to entice them to stay longer. But because the new hires have to start at the higher (minimum) wage, they can’t. There’s only so much money to go around.”
There’s less money to go around in an economy like this.
“I went to Olympia and talked to eight legislators about this,” said Moscrip, the chowder house owner. “It’s frustrating to have the situation the way it is and have no one pay attention to you.
“People down in Olympia don’t seem to have any understanding of the business world. They think this money grows on trees and the employees should be getting everything. What they don’t realize is if they break the back of businesses, and especially restaurants, there won’t be any jobs.”
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
