In survey, some businesses say price hikes likely if voters OK minimum wage boost
By Martha Stoddard
Omaha World-Herald Bureau, September 16, 2014
LINCOLN — With election day only seven weeks away, the battle of studies and statistics over a proposed minimum wage increase is heating up.
A survey released Monday concluded that some Nebraska service and retail businesses would likely cope with such an increase by raising prices or cutting employee hours. The survey results were released by the Employment Policies Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank with ties to the restaurant industry. ...
But State Sen. Jeremy Nordquist of Omaha questioned the institute’s credibility and its survey methodology. “They have fought minimum wage increases since the 1990s,” he said. “If they had their way, the minimum wage never would have gotten to $5 an hour.”
Nordquist co-sponsored the petition drive that put Initiative 425 on the November ballot. ... If passed by voters, Initiative 425 would boost the state’s minimum wage in two steps. It would increase from the current $7.25 an hour to $8 an hour for 2015, with a $9-an-hour minimum kicking in on Jan. 1, 2016.
The EPI study focused on businesses that said they would have to increase pay for some employees if the initiative passed, Saltsman said. He said the study did not use a random sample of businesses because the number affected by minimum wage increases tends to be a small proportion of respondents in such surveys. ...
Nordquist said the EPI study findings are at odds with surveys released earlier this year by Business for a Fair Minimum Wage and the Small Business Majority, two organizations that support minimum wage increases.
Both groups found that a majority of small business owners surveyed nationwide support a minimum wage increase.
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