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By Shira Schoenberg
MassLive.com, Springfield Republican, January 1, 2017

Beginning today, minimum-wage workers in Massachusetts will enjoy a boost in their pay. The state minimum wage increases from $10 to $11 an hour on New Year's Day, the last of three increases required by a 2014 law. ...

Dean Cycon, founder and CEO of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee Co. in Orange and an advocate for raising the minimum wage, pays his 13 employees at least $13 an hour and covers all their health care costs.

"I believe working people need to share in the benefits of the company, and frankly, they need all the help they can get in this economic era," Cycon said. ... "From a pricing point of view, businesses can afford to raise their prices a little bit to cover the small percentage of their costs of doing business that the increase in the minimum wage should represent."

Cycon said companies that do not pay their workers enough to live on are pushing costs onto the rest of society, since those workers then rely on food stamps or other government assistance.

"Companies that don't pay a reasonable wage to their entry-level or lower-level employees are calling upon the rest of society to support their business," Cycon said. ...

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