By Yareth Rosen
Alaska Beacon, October 18, 2024. Also in the Juneau Empire.
Alaska voters will weigh in on a ballot measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2027 and require that workers get paid for up to seven days that they are off sick. ...
[T]here are business owners who support the initiative. Some have banded together in a coalition called Alaska Business for Better Jobs.
Among the members is Derrick Green, owner of the Anchorage restaurant Waffles and Whatnot. At a news conference held by the group in September, Green said the sick-leave benefits he voluntarily provides to his workers paid off for the community, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The ability to go home when you have strep throat or you’re feeling nauseous or whatever symptoms may arise actually helped us as a business keep the community safer,” he said.
A higher minimum wage would boost Alaska’s economy, and it would help address the state’s chronic outmigration of working-age adults, ballot measure supporters argue.
A $15-an-hour wage is modest, particularly in Anchorage, where a large percentage of households are scraping by on low incomes, said Thea Agnew Bemben, owner of a consulting company. “When you think about the ability to build new housing, you have to have people who can pay rent. … These things are all connected, and I think getting to $15 is a good start,” she said.
While all employers would follow coalition members’ example and provide those benefits “in a perfect world,” reality requires the conditions to be set in law, said Jasmin Smith, an organizer of Alaska Business for Better Jobs and the president of the Alaska Black Chamber of Commerce.
“By it being an actual law that we all follow, I think it sets a good precedent and it levels the playing field,” Smith said at the news conference. ...