By Jeremy Allen
MLive Michigan, April 6, 2014
Ray Gholston works hard to earn his paychecks. He’s a full-time clerk at a retail store on the west side of Ann Arbor, where he helps keep the store organized and checks customers out at the register all while making $7.40 per hour.
He’s also homeless and has been since November, spending his nights – and some off days – at the Delonis Center in downtown Ann Arbor. Gholston said that his low-wage job doesn’t afford him the ability to pay rent anywhere in Ann Arbor or close to his job. ... “Increasing the minimum wage would go a long way. What companies are paying people now just isn’t enough to get by.”
During President Barack Obama’s April 2 speech at the University of Michigan, he talked about the federal minimum wage and how an increase in the minimum wage would immediately impact the economy in a positive way.
Locally, Raise Michigan is the leading advocacy group for the increase in wages among the state’s low-wage workers. ...
Roughly one million workers in Michigan earn less than the proposed $10.10 minimum wage, and about 96,000 of them make $7.40 per hour – the state’s minimum wage for workers who don’t rely on tips – or less. ...
Michigan will have a ballot proposal for an increased minimum wage on the November ballot, which would call for an increase from $7.40 per hour to $10.10 ...
As far as Gholston is concerned, he said he’s sure a change will come in the form of increased minimum wage. He said he disagrees when people say that mandating a minimum pay isn’t for the law to decide, but individual business owners should make that call independently when it comes to what their workers deserve.
“It reminds me of a Chris Rock joke when I hear about employers who pay minimum wage,” Gholston said.
“Chris Rock said ‘You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? Your boss is trying to say that if they could pay you less, they would, but it’s against the law.’ That’s the truth.”
The push to raise the minimum wage is also being backed locally by Zingerman’s and its co-owner Paul Saginaw, as well as elected officials such as State Representatives Adam Zemke and Jeff Irwin, both democrats from Ann Arbor.
Saginaw traveled to Washington D.C. in January to meet with business owners from Colorado, New York, Maryland and Washington, D.C. as they talked with U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez about the benefits of raising the minimum wage.
Copyright 2014 MLive Media Group