Minimizing the Minimum Wage

Analysis:

The story was basically framed as a partisan battle, with Democrats endorsing a raise in the minimum wage and Republicans opposing it. Both sides provide some reasons, but the AP reporter never verifies these comments for accuracy, despite the numerous online sources. For instance, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the minimum wage was worth just 34% of what an average worker earned per hour, the lowest point for this ratio in 40 years.

The original Associated Press version also provided voices outside of partisan lines, quoting AFL-CIO president Mark Gaffney. The Press version omitted these comments. They also omitted the fact that if the legislators do not take up this issue, that citizen groups will by trying to get it on the ballot in 2006.

One other omission was that the GR Press version did not print the Michigan House and Senate Bill numbers, making it difficult for readers to contact legislators on this issue.

Story:

John Edwards pushes for higher minimum wage in Michigan
By AMY F. BAILEY
Associated Press Writer

LANSING, Mich. — Democratic legislators fighting to increase the state’s minimum wage got some help Wednesday from 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

Edwards, a former U.S. senator who now directs the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, told several hundred people at a rally on the Capitol steps that raising the minimum wage will reduce the number of people living in poverty.

He called the $5.15 national minimum wage a “national embarrassment” and encouraged Michigan lawmakers to increase the rate to $7.15 in the state.

“It’s not just an income disparity, it’s an asset disparity,” he told the crowd that included Democratic lawmakers, union members and union officials. “We have enormous work to do in this country to close that gap.”
Edwards is making stops at a number of cities across the country to push for a higher minimum wage, which hasn’t been increased by the federal government since 1997. He also promotes the issue on his One America Committee Web site.
Democrats in the House and Senate earlier this year introduced a package of bills that would have raised the minimum wage by 75 cents this Friday, 75 cents in January 2006 and 50 cents in January 2007, bringing the rate to $7.15 an hour. The proposals also would tie future state minimum wage increases to the rate of inflation so the minimum wage could rise without legislative action.

But they have not been taken up by Republicans, who control both chambers and say the changes would cost jobs.

Ari Adler, spokesman for Republican Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema of Wyoming, said raising the minimum wage would help a few Michigan workers but hurt many small businesses. Other businesses already pay more than the minimum $5.15 per hour because they do business out-of-state and would not be affected by the initial increase, he said.

Senate Democrats tried Wednesday to move the bill increasing the minimum wage out of committee to the full Senate without a hearing, but Republicans rejected the Democrats’ effort.

About 3 percent of Michigan’s 2.9 million hourly workers, or about 88,000, earned the minimum wage or less in 2002, according to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. A little more than 16 percent, or 464,000 Michigan workers, made less than $7.15 per hour in 2002.

“Give them a raise today,” Democratic Sen. Irma Clark-Coleman of Detroit urged during the Senate debate.

Republican House Speaker Craig DeRoche of Novi has said he will not increase the minimum wage at a time when the state’s 7.1 percent May unemployment rate tied for highest among the 50 states. The national rate was 5.1 percent last month.

Text from the original article ommitted from the Grand Rapids Press version:

Later Wednesday night, House Republicans voted with their Democratic colleagues to discharge the package of minimum wage bills to the full House without a hearing. However, it is unlikely House Republican leaders will schedule a vote to send the bills to the Senate.

“It is a jobs killer,” DeRoche spokesman Matt Resch said of the wage hike.

But Edwards and other speakers at the Capitol rally, including Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney, said a higher minimum wage would improve the state’s economy because families would spend more once they had larger paychecks.
Gaffney said he would prefer to see lawmakers increase the minimum wage, but added that supporters will take the issue to voters next year if lawmakers don’t act.

“If the Legislature won’t do it, we’re headed to the ballot in ’06. That process has already begun,” Gaffney told reporters before the noon rally. “We’re in the strategy planning stage.”

Supporters of a higher minimum wage would have to collect 254,206 petition signatures from Michigan voters to get an initiative on the November 2006 ballot.

The minimum wage bills are House Bills 4514-18 and Senate Bills 318 and 320.