minimum wage

HB2523 lower minimum wage

#AZLeg Votes on Tax Cuts, Term Limits, Minimum Wage, & Childcare

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The Arizona House has been moving slowly this session. The Republican leadership has been cautious and strategic regarding when the House votes. With the 29D-31R split in the chamber, Speaker Rusty Bowers needs all 31 of his members sitting in their chairs during the final “Third Read” votes on ideological bills such as lowering the … Read more

Authoritarian Tea-Publicans reject the constitutional right of Arizona citizens to enact a minimum wage law

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Authoritarian Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature reject the constitutional right of Arizona citizens to make their own laws by citizens initiative. Like Louis XIV of France, they believe “I am the state,” and that you are the unwashed rabble who are mere subjects who should bow down before them.

They are also the tools of corporate plutocrats, i.e., the Arizona chambers of commerce organizations, and in particular, the Arizona Restaurant Association, the most vocal opponent of the minimum wage and paid time off leave. The ARA would bring back indentured servitude if not for the Thirteenth Amendment.

In 2016, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved a Minimum Wage Initiative that also allowed local governments to enact paid time off leave policies. The chamber of commerce organizations and their lickspittle Tea-Publican servants in the Arizona legislature will not stand for this. They want to stomp out this citizens-created law, despite the Voter Protection Act.

Two Tea-Publican members of the Arizona Legislature think voters should reconsider parts of the minimum-wage ballot measure they passed overwhelmingly less than two years ago. Proposals to roll back Arizona’s minimum-wage ballot measure protested at Capitol:

A pair of resolutions are moving through the Legislature that together would make major changes, including: freezing the minimum wage and stopping further scheduled increases to it; eliminating mandatory sick leave; repealing provisions regarding employer retaliation; and prohibiting cities from having a higher minimum wage than is set by the state.

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Evil GOP bastards reject the will of the voters on Minimum Wage Initiative (Prop. 206)

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Rep. Paul Gosar is Arizona’s most embarrassing member of Congress, but in the Arizona legislature, there are a multitude of challengers for the title of most embarrassing member of the legislature.

A perennial contender is Sen. Sylvia “Earth is 6,000 years old” Allen (R-Snowflake), a theocratic Dominionist Christian Reconstructionist whose heretical views of Christianity too frequently influence the legislation she advances.

Sen. Allen’s latest dog bone to chew on is the Minimum Wage Initiative (Prop. 206) overwhelmingly approved by Arizona voters in 2016. She believes that you the voters were “immoral” in approving the Minimum Wage Initiative, and she wants to reverse the will of you sinful voters. You’re all going to Hell!

The Arizona Capitol Times reports, Senate committee passes resolution to repeal state’s minimum wage:

A resolution sponsored by Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, would ask voters to undue much of Proposition 206, a citizen-driven initiative that boosted Arizona’s minimum wage from $8.05 to $10 in 2017, $10.50 in 2018 and eventually to $12 by 2020. Allen’s resolution would also repeal mandated paid sick time and a provision that allows domestic violence victims to take paid sick leave to handle issues caused by the violence.

Allen, who in the past has described the notion of minimum wage as “morally flawed,” wants voters to freeze the minimum wage at $10.50, repeal state laws requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, and adopt a new law prohibiting cities, counties or towns from adopting their own minimum wage if it’s higher than the state’s.

Mandating a minimum wage is like “pulling money from one person to give to another person,” she told the Senate Commerce and Public Safety Committee on Monday.

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Higher minimum wage did not reduce restaurant employment after all (updated)

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The Arizona Restaurant Association (ARA) is the principal chamber of commerce organization that has sought to defeat and to undermine Arizona’s Minimum Wage Act first approved by voters in 2006, and reaffirmed by voters in 2016.

The ARA was behind HB 2579, our Tea-Pulican legislature’s attempt to gut the 2006 Minimum Wage Act by narrowly redefining “wages.” The ARA participated in a failed legal challenge to the sufficiency of the 2016 Minimum Wage Initiative, and after the Minimum Wage Initiative was passed by voters, the ARA participated in the failed legal challenge to overturn the will of the voters.

The ARA’s position is always that the minimum wage (most restaurant workers are paid a sub-minimum wage and must rely on the kindness of strangers for tips) is devastating to restaurant businesses. The ARA always claims that a higher minimum wage will reduce employment in the restaurant sector.

While some marginal businesses teetering on failure may have closed due to higher wage costs, those businesses have been replaced by others that are competitive at the higher wage costs. And isn’t that what “creative destruction” in a free market economy is all about?

Howard Fischer reports today that employment in the restaurant sector has gone up since passage of the increase in the minimum wage. Food sector job growth outpaces state since wage hike on Jan. 1:

Remember those claims during the Proposition 206 debate that increasing the minimum wage would lead to less hiring and people being laid off from low-wage jobs?

The latest unemployment statistics suggest that hasn’t happened.

In fact, the data from the state Office of Economic Opportunity shows that the number of people working in bars and restaurants last month not only increased but did so at a rate six times higher than the economy as a whole. Employers who run food service and drinking establishments added 7,800 new workers compared with February, a 3.3 percent boost.

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