Public comments to the Administration & Human Services Committee
Unified Government of Wyandotte County-Kansas City, Kansas
Given by Heidi Zeller on behalf of the Kansas Action Network’s Raise the Wage campaign
June 16, 2008
Thank you Commissioners. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about the Unified Government’s proposed ordinance to raise the minimum wage in Kansas City, Kansas.
My name is Heidi Zeller and I’m organizing Kansas Action Network’s campaign to “Raise the Wage” in Kansas. KAN is a statewide coalition for workers’ rights, social justice and economic fairness, with 30 member organizations representing over 250,000 Kansans throughout the state. Raise the Wage is designed to increase the lowest state minimum wage in the nation through a coordinated, city-by-city campaign.
We have been pursuing this local approach because of the inability to pass a wage increase at the state level year after year. It has now been 20 years that the Kansas minimum wage has been stuck at $2.65 an hour, and a few months ago, the Kansas Legislature let another year go by without raising the state wage. So we appreciate and whole-heartedly support the initiative taken by the Unified Government to propose raising the minimum wage in Kansas City and helping Kansas workers who are struggling at the lowest end of the wage spectrum.
Last July, Congress raised the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $5.85 an hour. Over 100,000 workers in Kansas got a raise back then. But, according to the Kansas Department of Labor, at least 17,000 even lower-wage workers did not get a raise because they were covered by the Kansas minimum wage law.
As a study by the Kansas-based Ad Astra Institute shows, there are several categories of Kansas workers who can be legally paid less than the federal minimum wage, including workers whose employers gross under $500,000 annually and aren’t engaged in interstate commerce, companions for the elderly or infirm, workers at small newspapers and workers on small farms.(1) Working year-round at $2.65 an hour would net a full-time worker an annual income of less than $6,000 a year. That’s less than a third of what it would take for a single mother with two children to reach the federal poverty level in 2008.(2) In our view, this is unacceptable.
The point of our campaign is to ensure that no Kansas workers slip through the cracks of an outdated and unjust minimum wage. But research has shown that paying decent wages has positive economic effects not just for workers, but across the board: workers benefit because they can better support their families without relying on social service agencies, local merchants benefit because those workers are spending more dollars in their communities by necessity, employers save money through reduced employee turnover and a more productive workforce, and, overall, the economy gets a boost.
Opponents often argue that raising the wage will cause unemployment - that employers won’t be able to afford the increased labor costs and will therefore have to lay off their employees. Opponents tend to hold up small businesses as poster children, saying they will be especially harmed, unable to compete with large businesses, and may fail altogether.
In reality, substantial research has found no job loss resulting from increases in the minimum wage. In the four years after the last Federal minimum wage increase of 1996-97, the economy experienced its strongest growth in over three decades. Even when the economy is struggling, as it did in 1990-91, minimum wage increases have not been found to cost jobs.
As for the situation of small businesses, research has found that they can absorb and benefit from a minimum wage increase just as big businesses can. In fact, the number of small businesses grew faster in higher minimum wage states than in states with a minimum of $5.15 an hour. Additionally, the number of employees in small establishments grew almost twice as fast in higher minimum wage states.(3)
Critics sometimes deny all of this – but 31 states have set their minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage, and 140 cities have passed living wage ordinances, because they see benefits all around. Our campaign is inspired in part by evidence from these other states and cities, which suggests that raising the minimum wage is a win/win/win situation…for workers, businesses, and local economies.
Thank you for your attention to the important issue of wage fairness. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.
Footnotes
1. Ad Astra Institute of Kansas, “Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases in Kansas: A Background Report” (2007)
2. As of February 2008, the poverty line is $17,600 for a family of three, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/08poverty.shtml)
3. Fiscal Policy Institute, “States with Minimum Wages above the Federal Level have had Faster Small Business and Retail Job Growth” (2006)
