PORT ANGELES — North Olympic Peninsula business owners, prepare yourselves.
An increase in Washington state’s minimum wage to $13.50 is inevitable, a statewide business-group representative told more than 60 entrepreneurs at a breakfast meeting Tuesday.
Gary Chandler, vice president of government affairs for the Association of Washington Business, predicted voters this November will approve Initiative 1433.
It would increase the minimum wage from $9.47 an hour to $13.50 by 2020 and allows workers to earn one hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked.
“This initiative, at $13.50, will pass,” Chandler said.
“Every one of us are going to look for ways to cut costs, and it will be staff that you will cut,” he warned.
Jack Sorensen, a spokesman for the pro-I-1433 campaign, said in an interview later Tuesday that he expects enough I-1433 petition signatures will be submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office by the July 8 deadline to get the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Chandler addressed members of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Port Angeles Business Association, the Port Angeles Downtown Association, the Forks Chamber of Commerce and the West End Business and Professional Association who met in the Red Lion Hotel upstairs meeting room.
Port Angeles was the 16th and penultimate stop for Chandler and other AWB staff who are speaking to business groups across Washington to gather comments for the organization’s “small-business agenda” for the 2017 state legislative session.
Their next and last stop is Omak.
“This is the best turnout of all the other 15 we’ve done,” said Chandler, whose appearance was sponsored by the Port Angeles chamber and PABA.
During more than an hour of comments, business owners lamented high health care and insurance costs, burdensome state Labor and Industry regulations, the replacement of workers with robotic devices and the lack of motivated employees.
Early on, Chandler was asked by an audience member about I-1433.
Chandler asked meeting participants to raise their hands if they favored the wage hike.
None did.
But Chandler said I-1433 opponents are going against the grain of public opinion.
Polls taken throughout the past three years, even in Eastern Washington, have indicated “the public wants the minimum wage to go up,” Chandler said.
And overall public sentiment for $15 an hour “will not go away,” Chandler said.
A minimum wage hike went into effect in 2015 in Seattle and is likely to be established soon in Yakima, Chandler said.
A potential minimum-wage increase worried those in attendance.
“It seems to me it’s going to raise the cost of having a business exponentially,” one audience member said.
“Why are we not just fighting raising the minimum wage period?
“We are sitting back and being silent.”
Problem is, fighting the increase doesn’t work so well for some who take up the cause, Chandler said.
He recalled a Tacoma business owner whose business suffered when his $4,000 donation to fight a minimum-wage increase became public.
“He was crucified in social media,” Chandler said.
“His place was picketed.
“His business went in the tank.”
Chandler said the AWB will run a campaign against I-1433 but does not expect to raise much more than $100,000.
Sorensen suggested entrepreneurs are unduly worried about I-1433’s impact.
If approved, the wage hike would add $600 a month by 2020 to the paychecks of today’s $9.47-an-hour workers, a result “good for workers, good for our families, good for our economy, and that means it will be good for small-business owners,” Sorensen said.
Sorensen pointed to studies by the University of Washington and the National Employment Law Project (NELP), an employment-rights advocacy group.
NELP studied the impact on jobs from 22 increases in the federal minimum wage between 1938 and 2009 and determined there was no correlation between federal minimum wage increases and employment levels, according to the organization (http://tinyurl.com/PDN-nelpstudy).
The UW’s Evans School for Public Policy and Governance surveyed employers and workers and reviewed prices of commodities and services a year after the April 2015 implementation of Seattle’s minimum wage law, under which businesses with fewer than 500 employees will reach the $15-an-hour level in 2021 (http://tinyurl.com/PDN-wagestudy).
“Our preliminary analysis of grocery, retail, gasoline, and rent prices has found little or no evidence of price increases in Seattle relative to the surrounding areas,” according to the report.
Said Sorensen: “When low-wage workers have more money to spend at restaurants down the street and at clothing shops on Main Street, everyone has the opportunity to thrive.”
But the AWB says there is another way to achieve that goal.
“We recognize that people are struggling and we share the desire to see a growing, robust economy in which everyone has the opportunity to advance,” AWB President Kris Johnson said Jan. 11 in a statement.
“Rather than impose another mandate on small employers, we believe a better approach is to focus on education and to look for ways to help employers expand.”
Johnson will be the featured speaker at the July 13 Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon, which is open to the public. It will be from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Red Lion Hotel, 221 N. Lincoln St.
To register, see www.portangeles.org.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
