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LA union wants to be exempt from $15 minimum wage
By Heesun Wee
CNBC, July 30, 2015

As cities and states move independently to raise mandated pay for workers, the role of unions has emerged in the national fight for $15 an hour. ...

According to [Economic Policy Institute] analysis, a federal minimum wage of $12 in 2020 would return the wage floor to about the same position in the overall wage distribution that it had in 1968. ...

Mandated higher pay, of course, is a divisive issue and some small business owners say raised wages can lift employee retention and ultimately profits.

At 55-employee LetterLogic, a commercial printer in Nashville, Tennessee, starting pay for workers is around $14 an hour—roughly double the state's minimum of $7.25. Printing is a low-margin business, and great service allows LetterLogic to charge more than its peers.

LetterLogic founder and CEO Sherry Stewart Deutschmann does public speaking on wages and company culture. The most common question she's asked is: How she can afford to pay $14 an hour?

"We're not successful in spite of [higher wages], we're successful because of it," Deutschmann said.

Her wage decisions are based on what her lowest-paid employees could live on in the Nashville area. Deutschmann looks around her factory floor, does the wage math in her mind and asks, "In what neighborhood could I afford to live? What school could the kids go to, what college?"

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