‘Raise Michigan’ Hopes To Bump Minimum Wage

MI_Min_Wage_Logo_FINALPresident Barack Obama will speak Wednesday at the University of Michigan on raising the federal minimum wage, but he’ll soon find that Michigan workers are already fighting to do just that.

The Obama administration believes Americans need to gradually raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 by 2016. To put their money where their mouth is, Democrats in the Senate are planning votes for a bill, but — hold your breath! — Republicans appear ready and willing to block it, claiming a raise in wages will only, ironically, hurt workers, which is why President Obama is currently making the rounds.

Whatever spin or lens one wishes to bend reason through, however, there are few arguments that will convince workers they would be happier with less money in their pockets. From the bosses, one hears and reads that “Things are good! Leave them as they are!” but from workers one hears how bills are left unpaid, doctors are avoided, children go without clothes for school.

Sure, things are good. Don’t change a thing — that’s the tune Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder whistles.

With the GOP stranglehold still choking the democracy out of Michigan, Republican lawmakers are about as likely to support a slow raise to the minimum wage as they are to willingly close all their offshore bank accounts and invest in the arts. (Consider the Detroit Institute of Arts if you have any questions of the Snyder administrations’ regard there.) As a result, a coalition of grassroots civil rights, faith, community and labor-oriented groups have emerged to help put the issue on the ballot and let voters decide.

Raise Michigan is working to gather 258,000 signatures by late May in order to raise the state minimum wage from $7.40 an hour to Obama’s suggested $10.10 by 2017, allowing for automated increases to keep up with inflation over the coming years. Workers who labor for tips would increase from $2.65 an hour gradually until they eventually make the state or federally mandated minimum wage, whichever is highest.

Raise Michigan organizer Ryan Bates said:

People in Michigan shouldn’t? be working full time and still living in poverty…. The issue resonates deeply. Everyone understands what it means to work hard but not get ahead.

Calling Raise Michigan’s efforts “well-intentioned,” Michigan Restaurant Association CEO Brian DeBano says:

[It] will only increase menu prices and cost Michigan jobs, it will put many restaurants out of business.

One fella put it this way, roughly, on NPR this morning when talking about similar efforts to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas — “Well, I tell you what, the cost of those higher wages aren’t going to affect me; I’ll pass that cost right on to the customers.”

So, readers can see in a certain light DeBano is correct; raising the minimum wage would likely raise prices, but not because the system mathematically works out that way, but rather, because the greedheads running these companies won’t have anyone sniffing around their cookie jars. Instead of taking a cut to a relatively much loftier salary as a CEO, or even management (compared to average laborers,) these folks keep every cent they’ve squeezed and siphoned out of their workers’ rightful pay and absorbed the higher costs of paying honest pay by making their customers pay higher prices for the same goods. Often, the goods themselves are then made additionally inferior to shave a sliver more profit out of the margin.

If Raise Michigan reaches its signature goal and state lawmakers do not take the helm, the issue will go to a statewide vote this November and recent polling suggests support for the raise. EPIC-MRA conducted a survey of 600 Michigan voters and found that 60 percent supports raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour while 36 percent opposes it.

Democrats claim raising the minimum wage will bump earnings for over 16.5 million Americans, lifting 900,000 citizens above the federal poverty level by 2016, but Republicans are quick to point out that employment would be cut by about 500,000 jobs. However, senior associate dean at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Wallace Hopp has said:

The political statements we keep hearing that minimum wage laws are job killers simply doesn’t jibe with the facts…. [Regarding] extensive research that has been done on whether minimum wage hikes have a significant impact on employment, the preponderance of evidence is that they do not.

While some jobs may be lost in the transition and some businesses closed, perhaps we should begin asking ourselves if such low-paying jobs should in fact allowed to be so low-paying? Perhaps businesses that rely on workers laboring at wages too low to survive on are poor business models? Perhaps our subsidizing of mega-corporations only in turn creates unrealistic, indefensible competition for the countless small businesses average Americans start up every day — competition for cheaper goods and cheaper labor?

Raising the minimum wage and giving workers their honest due pay doesn’t kill jobs or raise prices, greed does — good old-fashioned human nature. It’s that one piece of sand below America’s bikini line that really chaps us. How can we strive for the American Dream when that fine grain continues to taint us? If life is a beach, why isn’t anyone talking about the sand?

Thank goodness Raise Michigan isn’t taking any vacations.

Edited/Published by: WG