Terrible politician Bill Bryant opposes raising the minimum wage.
The high point of Dino Rossi’s 2008 gubernatorial redemption tour came in mid-September, in the days following the Republican National Convention. After months of trailing in the polls, Rossi had finally clawed ahead of Democratic incumbent Governor Christine Gregoire to claim a small but significant lead. Things were looking good for Republicans up and down the ticket. Rossi’s people were starting to sound downright cocky. Then the minimum wage debate happened.
At an Association of Washington Business sponsored debate in Blaine, Rossi came out against Washington’s minimum wage. And as Josh Feit first reported here on HA, that didn’t play too well with minimum wage workers:
Rossi took the opposite point of view. Touting his Washington Restaurant Association endorsement (the most adamant opponents of the minimum wage), he said: “The minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage. It’s meant to be an entry level wage.”
The news pissed off [convenience store worker Garner] Palomata. “If he lowers it,” he said, “I don’t want to vote for him. I’d be cutting my head off. I don’t want to demote myself.”
The Gregoire campaign immediately seized the opportunity, running ads attacking Rossi for opposing the minimum wage. It worked. The Rossi bubble burst, and he quickly dropped in the polls. Rossi, who had managed a virtual tie just four years before, went on to lose by 6.5 points.
That’s a lesson you’d think Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bill Bryant might have learned before claiming the anti-minimum wage mantel:
Minimum wage is one economic issue where the two candidates diverge: Inslee supports a statewide minimum wage hike. Bryant does not, although he did back an $11.22 an hour wage at Sea-Tac airport.*
“Statewide level, the concern I have is that we can’t or we shouldn’t pin a minimum wage to the cost of living in King County,” Bryant said. “So I don’t think we can have a one-size-fits-all system.”
To be clear, Washington’s up-until-recently nation’s-highest minimum wage has proven both excellent policy and excellent politics, which is why raising the minimum wage remains exceptionally popular with voters. When workers have more money, businesses have more customers. And when businesses have more customers, they hire more workers. Our minimum wage is one of the reasons why our state economy is kicking ass.
So if the legislature fails to pass a minimum wage increase next year (and Bryant’s colleagues in the Republican-controlled senate won’t), a minimum wage initiative will be put on the state ballot and it will pass overwhelmingly. And you can be sure the Inslee campaign will make it clear to voters which candidate supports it and which doesn’t.
* Oh, and by the way, Bryant’s alleged support for an $11.22 an hour wage at Sea-Tac is bullshit. The port commission has obstructed the minimum wage struggle for years, first claiming that it had no authority to impose a minimum wage at the airport, and then suing that only it had the authority to do so after the SeaTac $15 initiative passed. Bryant only acceded to the $11.22 number after Alaska Airlines acceded to it first. Just sayin’.
Hi Goldy, I very much want a living minimum wage, and adamantly supported the $15 minimum wage in Seattle. However I also think that $15 an hour may not make sense in less wealthy areas where the median wage is significantly lower than it is in the Seattle metro area. I assume that there is some level of minimum wage that employers can’t or won’t absorb, and that this will differ from place to place.
According to the Bureau of Labor, the median hourly wage for all occupations in Seattle metro is $22.28. That means a $15/hour minimum wage in Seattle is equivalent to 67% of the median wage. Rather than require employers everywhere in the state to pay a $15 minimum wage, it might be reasonable and desirable to index a statewide minimum wage to, say, 67% of any given county’s median wage.
I’d like to hear other thoughts about a regionalized approach like this. I don’t know what this guy Bryant is actually proposing, or where he’s really coming from, but I can’t disagree with his saying “I don’t think we can have a one-size-fits-all system.”
@1 Sure, Seattle’s cost of living is higher, so a higher minimum wage for Seattle makes sense. But what is an appropriate minimum wage for the rest of the state? I can’t imagine that $9.43/hr is a comfortable wage in Republic or Moses Lake, either. And if you’re going to index, then how about indexing to median rents instead of median wages? Being able to live on the earnings from a full-time is what this is really all about, and for most people rent is the biggest component of the cost of living. Btw, a $15/hr wage is pretty punk in Seattle — pays the rent but not much more.
A nit. A “mantel” is what is above a fireplace. A “mantle” that one can don, or claim, as in “claiming the anti-minimum wage mantle.”
And Rossi sucked.
And so, apparently, does Bill Bryant (not that he has a chance against Inslee anyway).
The minimum wage was probably intended as an “entry-level” wage, but even in the middle of the last century it was a pretty shitty one. My first part-time job when I was in high school was as a stock-room grunt at Seattle Knitting Mills, and my starting wage for that was a nickel an hour over minimum. Reaganomics and the end of the Cold War pushing people out of professions into “McJobs” turned the minimum wage into “family wage” for all too many people. It didn’t take long before a few Republicans like Rossi stepped on that turd, so now although the Cheap Labor Conservatives(tm) are still pulling their strings, the GOP has changed the subject by screaming about baby parts, guuuuuuuuuuuuunzzzzz and Jihadi hordes at everyone’s doorstep and trying to revive white sheets as popular apparel.
@ “The minimum wage was probably intended as an ‘entry-level’ wage … ”
I don’t believe that. The minimum wage is, and always has been, a political animal. The “entry level wage” argument is just that — an argument, an excuse, a rationalization for keeping the minimum wage as low as possible. Like everything else in Republican oppositional politics, it has nothing to do with facts. You get the minimum wage raised when you overcome Republican opposition, it’s as simple as that.
What Roger @5 said.
Republicans like to avoid talking about the minimum wage because they generally oppose it. When the minimum wage argument is brought out in the open, republicans will lose votes by opposing it.
The traditional republican argument is that it will cost jobs. But we know from Seattle and other examples that it won’t.
This may be changing. Chamber of Commerce Republican types like Bryant are losing touch with, and losing control over the party base of conservative voters. They continue to push policy and practice at odds with their own voters. After spending fifty years employing dog whistle tactics to court less educated, wage earning white males, they remain confident in their ability to deceive them. Yet all around evidence mounts that this block of resentment fueled voters is running out of patience with the lies of their elites. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a state like Washington where Republican candidates even shun the party label in order to deceive less engaged voters.
@7 It’s telling that in the 2012 Republican Wave election, in the four red states where minimum wage raises were on the ballot, all four of those initiatives won. They can’t even get Republican voters to support them on this.
This article from Jan. 2015 is a bit dated, but I doubt the financial structure of the restaurant industry has drastically changed since then. Our friend Bickle argues that raising the minimum wage to $15 will put Seattle restaurants out of business. But servers don’t get the statutory minimum wage. (Not sure how, or whether, that changes under Seattle’s min wage ordinance.) In states where the federal minimum wage applies, employers pay servers only $2.13 per hour, and customers directly pay servers the rest of their wages in the form of tips. In other words, the wage cost of servers to restaurant owners is almost nothing, and their overall labor costs would barely be affected, if at all, by raising the federal minimum wage. The question to ask is, how can server wage costs impact restaurant profitability when servers are paid by the customers, not the restaurant?
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/17/1358327/-Let-s-Have-This-Conversation-Especially-If-You-ve-Ever-Been-A-Server-Images?detail=emailclassic
The minimum wage is not what one should be paid on entry. It is meant to be the minimum one should be paid. Workers should insist it be enough to support them and a family. Most states have rules for workers who are under 18 and generally can pay them less. These are true entry level positions as are positions that the state and federal government give money to employers for hiring first time employees or veterans, ect.
Still if this candidate comes out against the minimum wage it will play well in parts of Washington particularly eastern Washington and rural Washington. If he supports the minimum wage, and just disagrees with the amount of an increase that steals any thunder Enslee has on the subject, and this guy looks like a reasonable person. If he comes out against any increase Enslee can play that, only the issue will be decided by the legislature next year or the voters at the next election. So the best thing this guy can do is stay neutral and keep his head down, and grudgingly support the minimum wage, and the legislative process. If he’s smart and good then he won’t leave his mike on while in the back rooms at the legislature or at a political rally.
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