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July 25, 2016 02:05 PM UTC

Minimum Wage Increase Campaign Submits Yuuge Signature Haul

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

2016minimumwageA press release from Colorado Families for a Fair Wage announces their submission of over 200,000 petition signatures in support of their ballot measure to raise the minimum wage in Colorado to $12 an hour by 2020–more than double what was needed to qualify for the ballot in November:

Today, a coalition of business owners, workers and supporters with Colorado Families for a Fair Wage delivered boxes containing petitions with 200,000 signatures to place a ballot initiative that will raise the Colorado minimum wage to $12 by 2020 on the November ballot. The 200,000 signatures is more than double the 98,492 signatures needed to qualify, showing overwhelming support for the measure.

“It’s clear our measure to raise the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 will be on the November ballot,” said Patty Kupfer, Colorado Families for a Fair Wage campaign manager “Raising the minimum wage is fair and smart. It’s fair because people working full time should earn enough to support their families. It’s smart because when working people have more money in their pockets, they spend it here in Colorado, boosting our economy and helping our communities thrive.”

The average age of a minimum wage earner is 35 – and more than 86 percent of minimum wage earners are over the age of 20. A full-time minimum wage worker takes home less than $300/week, not nearly enough to afford food, rent and other basic needs. In Colorado, a minimum wage worker needs to work 80 hours per week to afford a basic two bedroom apartment.

“Even though I work full-time as a nursing assistant, I can’t afford to support us without public assistance,” said Marrisa Guerrero, a mom raising a school-age daughter. “We have no choice but to rely on subsidized housing, can’t afford health insurance and we even struggle to buy enough food for us to eat. I always thought if I worked hard and played by the rules, I’d be able to make it, but that isn’t going to happen until wages are raised.”

Extensive research shows that modestly raising the minimum wage helps the economy by increasing consumer spending – and does not result in job loss in sectors most likely to hire minimum wage workers. Because low and middle-income workers are more likely to spend pay increases than higher paid workers, each $1/hour wage increase creates a ripple effect in spending, generating $1.20 in the local economy, potentially leading to further job growth.

“Gradually increasing Colorado’s minimum wage to $12 by 2020 is the right thing for businesses, said Yoav Lurie, CEO and Founder of Simple Energy. “Higher wages drive better results, give customers more money to spend in our businesses, and create a better business climate. That’s why the majority of business leaders support raising the minimum wage.”

The Denver Business Journal reports that, after considering a smaller minimum wage increase ballot measure of their own, business interests led by the Colorado Restaurant Association are going with straight opposition to any further minimum wage increase:

Leaders of the Keep Colorado Working effort argue, however, that the proposal is an extreme one, especially after a 2006 voter-approved minimum-wage hike has upped the bottom level of pay by 61 percent in the past 10 years.

And while they acknowledge that the issue is a popular populist cause that is likely to draw people to the polls — both presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her former challenger, Bernie Sanders, supported a national minimum-wage hike in their campaigns — they believe that they can reach voters by explaining what they say is the negative impact on local companies.

The effort is likely to spend between $2 million and $3 million, said Loren Furman, CACI senior vice president of state and federal relations.

We expect this to be a good fight. Support for raising the minimum wage is running high after years of organizing by the “Fight for 15” coalition and both Democratic presidential candidates making a call for a minimum wage a central part of their own campaigns. It’s true that Colorado passed a progressive minimum wage increase in 2006, but in 2016 the argument that $8.31 isn’t enough for any worker to survive on is easy to make.

On the other side, you have millions of dollars from opponents with a direct bottom-line interest in the lowest minimum wage possible, not to mention Donald Trump’s infamous view of the minimum wage: “wages are [too] high.” So yes, the fight over raising the minimum wage in Colorado will have a proxy warfare component, as the larger competing ideological poles in this year’s election duke it out for votes. If Trump gets drilled in November, Colorado’s most vulnerable working families could benefit in more ways than…well, than just Trump losing.

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18 thoughts on “Minimum Wage Increase Campaign Submits Yuuge Signature Haul”

  1. This is something all fair-minded Coloradans can get behind.   I don't support the $15 campaign because more than doubling the minimum could cause job loss.   But this phases in another $4 by 2020.  We can weigh a further increase at that time.  Take a bow, you hard-working citizens.

    1. So you're a Trump fan now. Let’s work from the top? That’s what we’ve been doing since Reagan and it never works. If you’re still buying voodoo economics no wonder you’re buying Trump flim flam too.

      1. If Putin supports Trump, that's good enough for Moddy!

        Trump has called for following Moscow’s lead on various global issues andquestioned whether it’s necessary for the U.S. to always defend other members of NATO, the alliance created during the Cold War to protect American partners from an expansionist Soviet Union. His rhetoric about foreign policy neatly matches the message coming out of Moscow: that America has little need for its long-time partners in Europe ― particularly in NATO ― or elsewhere, and that the U.S. should have less influence internationally. Trump has extensive business and financial ties to Russia. The Washington Post has described his relationship with Putin as a “bromance.” Troll accounts tied to the Russian government have promoted Trump on Twitter, the New Yorker’s Adrian Chen noted last year. And this week, mysterious hackers released internal Democratic National Committee emails ― a move that security experts and reporters are increasingly convinced was an attempt by the Russian government to swing the presidential election to Trump.

        Trump’s deep relationship with Russia has the intelligence community worried.

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-trump-national-security-briefings_us_57963cd6e4b02d5d5ed2476b

    3. Trump merely said that he was open to "doing something" on the minimum wage, per your link. Doing something? Like decreasing? Like adding a dime per hour? What?

      I signed both those petitions – for the $12/hr by 2020 and the $15 /hr wage. However, I can't find this initiative on the TRACER site. Does it not have enough signatures?

      Fight for $15,  Other cities that have enacted $15 have actually experienced flat or positive economic effects, contrary to the gloom and doom in the room.

      1. I dont think any city has actually adopted 15, mj, in the sense of today it is 15.  So it is premature to say what the results will be when that does take effect.  The two states ,new york  and ca, phased in their hikes and added escape clauses .

        1. Then you'd be wrong again, V. Two cities have already implemented $15/hr wage increases:

          Syracuse, (city workers only),   and SeaTac (which adopted its minimum wage law in 2013)—have already reached $15.

          Seatac (Seattle-Tacoma area) saw a 100 person job loss right after the minimum wage was enacted, but has since regained and increased employment.

          The rest of the 14 cities raising their wages are, as you said, phasing it in over time. None of them are reporting negative economic effects.

        2. There is no evidence that workers making a living wage costs jobs and hurts the economy.  Quite the opposite. That's just the bullshit they fed workers to bust unions and make way for the age of trickle down. Kind of like the bullshit that says without TPP just the way it is, no time for changes, we're all going to die and/or have to learn Chinese to speak to our overlords. 

          1. Well, lets make the minimum wage $100 an hour then. We know as a matter of religious faith that it would cost no jobs, just as we know that stopping trade guarantees prosperity.  Wonderful thing, faith.

            1. You don't seem to ever stay hardly at all above the ground outside Alice's rabbit hole for even an entire thread anymore.  What gives?

            2. I said living wage, V.  You know. Like the kind of wages that created the broadest, most prosperous, upwardly mobile middle class the world had ever known, The kind that allowed ordinary, average people with average jobs to buy ordinary stuff, pay their bills, have savings and live decent lives. 

              Try making a point without ridiculous hyperbole once in a while. 

              And spare us the lectures about how frugal you are and how you don't have sympathy for people who spend foolishly. You don't have to spend foolishly to be a couple of paychecks away from disaster if you don't make a living wage.  

              Besides you might strain yourself at your age patting yourself on the back. 

            1. No China is not. But defending ourselves against Chinese economic domination is a favorite scary argument employed by those who insist we 're doomed if we don't sign on to TPP as it right now, this second, CHB never misses a chance to throw that one out here. Pretty sure you have, too.

              1. For a person who claims to be offended by hyperbole you sure dwell in it.  Somehow you managed to turna thread devoted to a $12 minimum wage, which I support, into a screaming reaming assault on TPP.  Plus you seem to imply you wont vote for 12 because you want 15.  Plus you are really angry because I saved some money.  The.n you attack china.  You are putting on quite a show.

                1. I never said a single word about whether I'd vote for $12 or not.  I made an offhand remark comparing unfounded bullshit scare tactic threats about living wage to bullshit scare tactic hysteria about China commonly employed by those supporting TPP. That's not an attack on China but on scare tactics.

                  Thanks for proving my point.

                  1. When you go to a thread about a $12 minimum wage and brag that you were too busy attacking me personally for saving money, attacking tpp as the end of civilisation and attacking china that you were too distracted to say a word about the $12 minimum wage, I certainly agree you proved a point.

                    The point may be you need to ease off the fracking fluid while gripped in your late night frenzy!

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