In
state after state, labor unions and community groups have pushed
lawmakers to raise the minimum wage, but those efforts have faltered in
many places where Republicans control the legislature.
Frustrated by this, workers’ advocates have bypassed the legislature and placed a minimum-wage increase on the ballot in several red states — and they are confident that voters will approve those measures on Tuesday.
In
Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, binding referendums would
raise the state minimum wage above the $7.25 an hour mandated by the
federal government.
These
measures are so overwhelmingly popular in some states, notably Alaska
and Arkansas, that the opposition has hardly put up a fight.
“These
groups have noticed that minimum-wage increases can easily pass — they
have seen this in the past few years,” said John G. Matsusaka, executive
director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University
of Southern California. “They can’t get it through the legislatures in
these red states, so they do it this way.”
Some
Republicans say that the main reason for these initiatives is to
mobilize low-income voters to help re-elect embattled Democrats, like
Senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska. But
supporters deny this, saying they are pushing to raise the minimum
because so many workers are struggling and because the minimum wage has
trailed inflation.
The
measures in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota would set the
minimum wage lower than the $10.10 an hour that President Obama has
asked Congress to pass, to no avail. The ballot initiatives in Arkansas
and South Dakota call for a minimum of $8.50 an hour, while Nebraska’s
would go to $9 and Alaska’s to $9.75.
Zach
Polett, campaign director of Arkansas Fair Share, the advocacy group
backing the $8.50 minimum wage there, said some advocates were seeking a
higher number.
“We
decided to go with a level that had broad support in Arkansas,” he
said. “We were looking to start where the state is. We’re not New York,
California or Seattle. We are the South.”
Seattle
has adopted a measure that will raise its minimum wage to $15 in
several stages, while San Franciscans will vote on Tuesday whether to
approve a $15 minimum wage. Residents in nearby Oakland will vote on a
$12.25 wage.
In
a surprising twist, hardly any business groups in San Francisco are
opposing the $15 proposal, which is expected to pass easily.
“There’s
been the conflict about gentrification and the pushback around the tech
industry, and a good part of the business sector has been looking for
ways to defuse some of the issue,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the
Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California,
Berkeley. “They see this as one way.”
Nonetheless,
one group posted a billboard in San Francisco with a picture of a giant
touch screen saying, “Hello, may I take your order?” To the right of
the screen, the text reads, “With a new $15 minimum wage, employees will
be replaced by less costly, automated alternatives.”
The
billboard was placed by the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit
organization set up by Richard Berman, a prominent anti-union lobbyist.
Ed
Flanagan, a former state labor commissioner in Alaska, said he and two
other former labor commissioners had overseen an effort to get the
minimum-wage initiative on the ballot because in their view the state’s
$7.75-an-hour minimum wage was too low, considering the high cost of
living there.
“We’ve
gone from having the highest minimum wage in the country to being 19th,
behind even Florida and Arizona,” Mr. Flanagan said. “I’m not claiming
that $9.75 is a living wage in a state like Alaska.”
Dennis
DeWitt heads one of the few groups to campaign against the $9.75
initiative, the Alaska chapter of the National Federation of Independent
Business.
“All
the data show that this would kill entry-level jobs, which means the
unemployment level for our young people will go up,” he said. “This $2
increase will consume the budget that small businesses have to pay their
employees.”
But,
Mr. Flanagan said, many studies have shown that a minimum-wage increase
does not reduce jobs. He noted that the Alaska initiative exempts
teenagers under 18 who work fewer than 30 hours a week — the federal
minimum wage instead would apply.
Jackson
T. Stephens Jr., the founder of Exoxemis, a biotechnology company in
Arkansas, sued to get the initiative thrown off the state’s ballot. He
said that the signature of a notary public had been forged, which should
have disqualified thousands of the signatures collected, and he
challenged the secretary of state’s decision to give advocates
additional time collect more signatures. The state’s Supreme Court
rejected his challenge and let the $8.50 measure stay on the ballot.
Mr.
Stephens, who is chairman of the Club for Growth, the conservative
policy organization, said the initiative was a cover for other political
activities, like Democrats’ get-out-the-vote efforts. He complained
that outside union money was behind it.
But having lost the lawsuit, he said, he was not fighting the ballot measure any further.
“This
is an overwhelmingly popular initiative,” he said, noting that
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have endorsed it. “This thing is
going to pass whether I jump up and down or spend all my money.”
The National Education Association, the giant teachers’ union, has contributed $800,000 to the Arkansas initiative.
Explaining
why her union contributed the money, Karen White, the N.E.A.'s
political director, said, “This will help many students and parents
support their families, and we have a lot of fellow educators — food
service providers, custodians, adjunct professors — who don’t earn a
living wage.”
Illinois
has a nonbinding ballot initiative that calls for a $10 minimum wage.
Jessica Angus, the campaign manager of Raise Illinois, the coalition
behind the effort, said her group had identified 336,000 minimum-wage
voters and had knocked on one million doors.
“We
expect that we will have a mandate for the legislature to increase the
minimum wage immediately,” Ms. Angus said, noting that the minimum wage
had become a major issue in the Illinois governor’s race.
There
is also a nonbinding referendum vote in Wisconsin, where residents in
nine counties will vote on whether to raise the state’s minimum to
$10.10 an hour.
Gwyneth
Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association,
has been one of the most vocal skeptics of San Francisco’s $15 proposal,
although her group has not officially opposed it.
“We
have expressed a lot of concern, like a lot of small businesses, about
how are they going to adjust to a 40 percent increase in the minimum
wage,” she said, noting that the city’s current minimum wage is $10.74.
She
voiced dismay that the $15 measure did not create a lower minimum wage
for tipped workers, like waiters, who she said sometimes made more than
$100,000 a year. She predicted that more restaurants would put a flat
service charge on all bills, some of which would be shared with workers
in the kitchen.
But then, sounding much like a supporter, Ms. Borden acknowledged that not even $15 was a living wage in San Francisco.
“It’s
not in the business community’s interest for the minimum wage to
increase, but there is an understanding why it needs to increase,” she
said.
Correction: November 3, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the terms of a nonbinding ballot initiative in Illinois. The initiative calls for a minimum wage of $10 an hour, not $10.65.
An earlier version of this article misstated the terms of a nonbinding ballot initiative in Illinois. The initiative calls for a minimum wage of $10 an hour, not $10.65.