The Baltimore City Council is debating raising the city’s minimum wage to $15, but several council members are concerned that the hike would hurt small businesses. Proponents of the bill are short on votes and opted to keep the bill alive by sending it back to committee in a vote taken on Monday, August 15. Sending the bill back to committee spared it from potentially being defeated. It’s likely that the decision to raise the minimum wage will be up to a new council that will be elected in November.
According to the Baltimore Business Journal, council members opposing the bill and those that abstained from voting are mainly concerned with the negative impact it would have on the small business community.
The article reports that Councilmen Eric Costello said “he believes the legislation could have ‘dire consequences’ for small businesses in Baltimore, which are already subject to a fragile economic climate and at a competitive disadvantage to businesses in surrounding jurisdictions like Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.”
Councilwoman Helen Holton who abstained from voting said: “As much as I believe that minimum wage needs to change, I think that my concern for as long as I’ve been here has always been support of minority, small, women-owned businesses and I know first-hand that this will hurt those businesses if Baltimore City does this alone.”
Recent reports from cities that have
raised their minimum wage recently back up the Council members’ concerns. The
city of Seattle, who hiked the city minimum wage to $11 last year, hired a
group of economists to study the impact of the increase on workers. According
to a Washington Post Article, the study showed that
although workers were earning more, fewer of them had a job due to the
increase. Those with jobs saw their hours cut back after the hike went into effect.
If there was this much of a lack-luster improvement to Seattle’s low-wage workers, it’s doubtful that an increase in Baltimore’s minimum wage
would have much of an impact on workers. However, small businesses would
undoubtedly be impacted by a major wage hike, driving many businesses
out of the city or out of business.
