One group of restaurant workers wants to force Michigan to raise the minimum wage rate, while another is blasting the attempt as “irresponsible and dangerously out of touch.”
A group calling itself the Restaurant Opportunities Center launched their campaign Thursday in Detroit, hoping to get on the ballot in 2018 and raise Michigan’s minimum wage to $12 an hour. The current minimum wage law in Michigan calls for $8.90 per hour, but that goes up to $9.25 in January. If the effort revealed yesterday makes it to the ballot and is approved by Michigan voters, workers would make the targeted $12 an hour starting five years from now in 2022.
However, not everybody in the restaurant industry is supportive. In fact, the Michigan Restaurant Association unleashed strong criticism of the campaign almost immediately calling it a job killer. Justin Winslow is President & CEO of the Michigan Restaurant Association. He told the Associated Press that the proposal would kill jobs, and is “irresponsible and dangerously out of touch.” He also pointed out that the minimum wage in Michigan has already been hiked three times and is slated to increase again in the new year.
The Restaurant Opportunities Center website is operated by the Michigan One Fair Wage Committee, and they are reportedly intent on getting the Michigan Elections Board to greenlight their petition form so they can begin the signature collection process in time to get the issue on the ballot in 2018. The will need to get more than a quarter million signatures to accomplish the first task of getting it before state legislators.
Alicia Farris is the director of the Michigan Restaurant Opportunities Center. She told the A-P, “The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the Michigan economy, but also the lowest-paying,” adding, “It’s time for one fair wage for Michigan.”
Over at the Michigan Restaurant Association, Winslow tells the A-P, Farris’ organization, “is funded almost entirely from out-of-state interests who either don’t know or don’t care how their policies impact real people in Michigan.” He also called the measure “reckless,” and one which will “irrefutably harm Michigan’s second-largest private employer.”
Like Michigan’s current staged increase plan, the group’s concept would take the minimum wage to $10 in 2019, $10.65 in 2020, $11.35 in 2021 and finally to $12 in 2022. It would then rely on annual “inflationary adjustments” beyond that date.
Stay tuned, the battle has only just begun.
