By Michael Roberts
Westword, Oct 12, 2016
Editor's note: As part of our continuing election coverage, we're taking a closer look at amendments and propositions that will be on the Colorado ballot in November. ... Amendment 70 would boost the minimum wage from its current $8.31 per hour to $12 by 2020, with incremental bumps over a three-year period.
In the following interview, Debra Brown, campaign manager for Colorado Business for a Fair Minimum Wage — a key part of a coalition under the Colorado Families for a Fair Wage banner — outlines the proposal and responds to points raised by opponents of the measure.
The complete transcription of our conversation is supplemented by photos from the Colorado Families for a Fair Wage Facebook page, as well as links and insertions made for reasons of fact-checking and clarification.
Westword: Why should voters support Amendment 70?
Debra Brown: Amendment 70 is a modest and gradual increase to the minimum wage that will bring it up to $12 by 2020. It gives businesses time to adjust. So not only is it good for the Colorado economy — it's projected to contribute $400 million to the Colorado economy, according to a study that was conducted by the University of Denver — but it's also good for business.
How will the rate increase?
It will go up by 99 cents starting in January of 2017, and then 90 cents each year until 2020, and it will be adjusted thereafter for the cost of living. ...
Those opposing Amendment 70 have also complained about what they see as the economic disparities across the state. They suggest that businesses in booming Denver may be able to absorb these raises, but in rural communities that are struggling, businesses simply won't be able to do so. According to them, they reached out and offered a variety of proposals prior to the initiative making the ballot, suggesting that different wages be set for rural versus urban communities, plus provisions for first-time workers and teenagers — and those suggestions were rejected. Can you tell me, from your perspective, why Amendment 70 is fair for everyone across the state as written? And can you also tell me about any outreach efforts you're familiar with involving the Colorado Restaurant Association and other opposition members?
If you look up the ballot measures they filed, not one of them includes a rural or small-business or agricultural allowance. [The unsuccessful proposals can be accessed at this page on the Colorado Secretary of State's website.] They keep saying that, but the titles that were submitted by the restaurant association certainly don't show that.
We didn't exempt rural Colorado because the truth of the matter is, Amendment 70 will be good for rural Colorado. It will be good for small businesses there like it was in 2006 [via Initiative 42].
In 2006, we increased the minimum wage by 33 percent overnight. The opposition's narrative is that every time there's been a minimum wage increase, in the history of minimum wage increases, they're sure the sky is going to fall, the sky is going to fall. But that's not what happened. We have a vast body of research that's been conducted over decades showing that gradual, modest minimum wage increases like the one we have on the ballot here in Colorado do not increase unemployment, even in industries that are most likely to hire low-wage workers. And they continue to show modest increases in wages for low-wage workers. That's what happened here in 2006.
Between 2006 and 2008, after raising the minimum wage by 33 percent overnight, we added 73,000 jobs to the overall Colorado economy; 6,000 of those were in rural Colorado, and 5,000 of those were in the restaurant industry. There were 3,300 new small businesses — small businesses are described as having fifty employees or fewer — that opened their doors between 2006 and 2008. And the small business sector added 15,000 jobs to their payrolls. So the opposition's claims that this is going to be bad for rural Colorado and bad for small businesses is discredited by the large body of research that's been conducted over decades. And it's also inconsistent with what happened in Colorado.
In 2008 and for the years immediately thereafter, a recession hit — and another complaint made by the opposition to Amendment 70 is that there's no provision to pause the raises should another recession come along. Were there job losses during that economic downturn that can be traced to the higher minimum wage? Or do you feel that's inaccurate?
If you look at when recessions have hit historically, you never hear about people saying the solution is to cut wages or to freeze wages, because the best way to stimulate economic growth is to put money in the pockets of workers. So even in a recession, low-wage workers who make money spend it. They don't put it in offshore bank accounts and they don't put it in 401ks. So maintaining wages, especially for people at the bottom who are struggling the most, is one of the most important things you can do to stimulate economic growth. The recession hit everybody hard. And after the recession, in the restaurant industry, the job growth skyrocketed.
If there were job losses during the recession, is it your position that those job losses didn't come as a result of a higher minimum wage passed a few years earlier?
Absolutely not. Decades of research show that higher minimum wages have little to no impact on unemployment.
How are you getting the message out about your proposal? And what kind of responses are you getting?
The good news is, the polling is consistently showing that the majority of voters are in support of Amendment 70, and that's even after being bombarded by the opposition messaging. ... And for me, personally, it's been amazing to see the level of support from businesses. We're around 200 official endorsers. There are restaurants ranging from Illegal Pete's to manufacturing like Polar Bottle in Boulder.
That's a great story. The owner of Polar Bottle, her name is Judy [Amabile]. She actually raised her wages to $12 back in 2011, and she did it because she thought it was the right thing to do. She fully expected her bottom line to go down. She expected it to cost her money, but she and her business partner decided it was the right thing to do, because her workers were having to work multiple jobs and struggling so hard to be able to have money for their kids to participate in extracurricular sports. That's the thing: When you have small-business owners who are working with their employees, that's why you see so many Colorado businesses that are already paying average wages over $12 an hour.
I love her story, because to me, she's our business case. She's competing against China — but what happened was, when she raised her wages, her per-bottle production costs actually went down. That's because her turnover became pretty much nonexistent. People wanted to work there. They didn't have to get second jobs. They weren't late for work when their cars broke down; they could fix them instead of having to rely on public transportation. Employees work harder when they feel valued. That's just common sense. But we hear it time and time again from our business owners across sectors. They say when they treat their employees with respect and pay them a wage that allows them to take care of their basic needs, their employees provide better customer service. They're just better employees. They see productivity go up, they see absenteeism and turnover go down. And those are things that are cost-saving benefits.
Pete Turner with Illegal Pete's, he's another one who did the math. He did a livable-wage initiative in 2015. He saw that his bottom line went up, and he didn't increase his prices. It was because his retention of employees was so much higher than the industry average that he didn't have to spend those resources training new employees. So his margins went up as well.
Software is another example. The CEO of Simple Energy also has a great story about why he cares about the minimum wage and why he's endorsed Amendment 70. He pays his call-center people $15 an hour, even though that's a function that can be outsourced. When people don't outsource it, these are usually low-paying jobs. But he pays $15 an hour because he knows it leads to improved performance and retention, and greater customer satisfaction. And the facts support that. He has an overall customer-satisfaction level of 94 percent, which is unheard of in the industry. And he says it's a direct result of paying his workers $15 an hour.
Again, we have a really broad range support from businesses: restaurants, manufacturing, retail, you name it. They get that it's good for the Colorado economy overall, because when you put money in the pockets of low-wage workers, they put it right back into Main Street. It's good for their business because they get cost-saving benefits. And a lot of our business owners also talk about leveling the playing field in a couple of ways. The average small-business employer is already paying, on average, wages of over $12 an hour. They're basically having to compete with large national chains paying poverty wages. They're supporting Amendment 70 because it levels the playing field in terms of not giving a competitive edge to employers that aren't paying workers enough to meet their basic needs. And it's almost like double jeopardy, since they're also getting hit with additional taxes.
If somebody's working full-time, or even two jobs, and they still can't put food on the table and cover their rent, they're going to have to turn to public services. And when they turn to public services, then you have taxpayers and the businesses that are already doing the right thing having to subsidize those low-wage employees. That's why Amendment 70 is a win for them, as well.
Why did you feel Amendment 70 should be placed in the constitution? The opposition argues that making it a constitutional amendment will prevent it from being adjusted or fixed over time.
This is the only way the State of Colorado can raise the wage, since the voters of Colorado already put it into the constitution [via the aforementioned Initiative 42]. Voters thought it was a good idea to put it into the constitution back in 2006, and a majority of voters think it's a great idea now.