May 21,
2014 (Lansing) – –
The state’s leading small business organization, the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), was joined by small
business owners Nevin Groce of Nterior, Inc. of Detroit and Tom
Little of ServiceMaster of Kalamazoo at a hearing of the House Government
Operations Committee today on the subject of the minimum wage.
Two
proposals were discussed at the hearing, a proposal that backers are trying to
put on the November ballot via petition signatures and an alternate proposal
that passed the Senate. The ballot proposal would increase Michigan’s $7.40
minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2017, phase out the tipped wage credit for
tipped workers – such as waiters and waitresses – from $2.65 an hour to the
full minimum wage over nine years and index the changes to inflation. A Senate
bill that was passed last week to derail the ballot effort would raise the
minimum wage to $9.20 an hour, raise the minimum for tipped employees to $3.50
an hour and be indexed to inflation.
“While we
are willing to work with the legislature for a less harmful minimum wage
proposal than the ballot attempt, the Senate bill as passed is not acceptable,”
said Charlie Owens, NFIB State Director. “We appreciate efforts by the
House to find a better alternative to the job-killing ballot measure, but time
is running out.” Owens’ comments referred to the opinion by some that if a law
is not enacted before the signatures for the ballot proposal are submitted, a
court could rule against the new law in favor of the ballot avenue.
Tom Little,
owner of ServiceMaster, said his business will struggle with higher labor
costs.
“A family
business like mine must make a profit to stay in business and a minimum wage
increase only mandates the expense side of the Profit and Loss statement not
the income side,” he said. “Small businesses can’t index their revenue to
inflation or force customers to pay a set price to cover the extra cost of the
wage mandate.”
Groce, who
runs Nterior, Inc., said a higher minimum wage would hurt businesses
trying to grow in places that desperately need jobs.
“As a
struggling small business owner trying to establish a foothold in Detroit, this
kind of command and control manipulation of the wage structure is not at all
helpful to my efforts,” said Groce. “Unemployment is the real enemy of
struggling families and proposals like this strike directly at those the
advocates claim to be helping.”
Owens said
that the original Senate Bill as introduced was a reasonable alternative to the
ballot proposal and that removing the indexing under the current Senate
proposal would be a good start to finding an acceptable legislative solution.
For more
information about NFIB, please visit www.nfib.com.
