By Sarah E. Needleman and Daniel Lippman
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 2013
... Officials in SeaTac, which is 10 square miles nestled between Seattle and Tacoma and consists of an airport and its surroundings, confirmed this month that it will raise the minimum wage for many workers to $15 an hour starting in January. ... Elsewhere in Washington state, employers already pay $9.19 an hour, the highest state minimum wage in the country, and that amount will rise 13 cents next month. In January, Oregon's hourly minimum will climb to $9.10, New York's to $8 and Vermont's to $8.73. Among municipalities, San Francisco currently has the highest minimum wage, at $10.55, which will increase to $10.74 next month. ...President Barack Obama has backed raising the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25 ...
Gary Gerber, founder and owner of Sun Light & Power, in Berkeley, Calif., starts his entry-level workers at $15 an hour or more and believes that arguments against a higher minimum wage are "probably being greatly over-blown." He says: "What's going to happen is the raising of the wage will pump a bunch more money into the economy."
Mr. Gerber's company, which designs and installs solar-electric and solar-hot-water systems, has 65 employees and about $14 million in annual revenue. The minimum wage in California is $8 an hour, and it's slated to increase to $9 next July. "You're going to get better quality employees if you pay better," he says. ...
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