Employers, employees split over push to raise minimum wage in Missouri

Although Lance Hovis earns close to minimum wage delivering pizzas, he thinks raising Missouri's minimum wage is a bad idea.

"We have so many people out of work already," he said. "Businesses would have less money to pay workers if minimum wage went up, and then even more people would be out of work."

Hovis won't be signing a petition circulating statewide to ask Missouri voters on the November 2012 ballot to increase the state's minimum wage by $1 to $8.25 an hour.

"If you're not happy with what you're getting paid at your job, find another one," Hovis said.

When he's delivering pizzas at Papa John's in Cape Girardeau, Hovis earns $5 an hour plus tips. His co-worker Bailey Abbott, who makes pizzas and waits on customers at the counter earning minimum wage, said she'd like to see the wage increase.

Abbott graduated from high school last year and is still living at home because the money she earns goes to pay her cellphone, gas, car insurance and other bills, she said. In addition to her part-time pizza job, she works for her dad part time doing clerical work at his construction business.

"It would be great," she said about making an extra dollar an hour. "I'd have more left over to spend on me. It wouldn't have to all go to bills."

Carly Winters, Papa John's general manager, said she'd like to see an increase in minimum wage for her employees.

"A lot of these kids work really hard, and I'd like to pay them more," Winters said. "But that's not up to me."

The franchise's policy is to start workers at minimum wage, and less than that if they're delivering and have the opportunity to earn tips, she said. Winters herself started making pizzas for minimum wage and worked her way up to general manager. She's been with the company for 11 years now, but many of her employees are students who come and go, she said.

Missouri's minimum wage of $7.25 is equal to the federal minimum wage. The ballot initiative would ask voters to raise that by $1 effective Jan. 1, 2013. Missouri already has an automatic escalator provision that raises the state's minimum wage on Jan. 1 of each year if the consumer price index increases.

Earlier this year, a bill to cap Missouri's minimum wage at federal levels was approved by the House but never came up for debate in the Senate. House Bill 61 would have also eliminated the Missouri's minimum wage escalator.

Since the last minimum wage increase in 2006, the Missouri Legislature also has tried to erode the minimum wage by cutting it for tipped employees and young workers, said Lara Granich, director of Missouri Jobs with Justice, one of several organizations circulating petitions in an effort to get the 120,000 signatures required to get the minimum wage increase on the ballot.

"Our state has minimum-wage workers working at least 40 hours a week who are still not able to support a family, and that's not right. That's not how we're going to make sure our state's economy recovers," Granich said. "What our businesses need are customers with money in their pockets. When you give a raise to people who are making the least amount of money, it gets spent quickest in the local economy."

$15,000 a year

At Missouri's and the current federal minimum wage, a full-time worker makes about $15,000 a year. Eighteen states, including Illinois, have minimum wages higher than the federal level. This month, Colorado, Montana, Ohio and Washington announced they were giving minimum wage workers a boost, ranging from 28 to 37 cents per hour. Arkansas' minimum wage is lower than the federal level, at $6.25.

Under Missouri law, retail or service businesses whose annual gross income is less than $500,000 are not required to pay the state minimum wage rate.

Rep. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, who is also an executive with McDonald's, said he doesn't support a minimum-wage increase as a businessman or a legislator.

"To me, wages should be a contractual relationship between the business owner and the employee, and you agree upon what you want to do and for what wage you want to do it for," he said. "In my opinion, the government doesn't belong in the middle of that contractual relationship."

Mandating a minimum-wage increase would do more harm than good for workers, he said.

"When you start raising the minimum wage, then people start looking at ways to eliminate the employees. It really hurts the people you're trying to help because less of them are going to find out they are employed," he said.

Wallingford said minimum wage workers often don't have skills to qualify for higher wages.

"Businesses are willing to train them, but they don't want to train them at a skilled labor rate," he said.

McDonald's does pay its entry-level employees above minimum wage, but people should be given raises based on job performance, not arbitrarily by the government, he said.

Increasing Missouri's minimum wage would put the state at a competitive disadvantage with neighboring states in attracting new businesses, according to Richard Moore, assistant general counsel and director of regulatory affairs for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

"This is especially true due to the fact that approximately 70 percent of Missouri's workforce lives near our borders," Moore said.

Raising Missouri's minimum wage to $8.25 would give the state the third-highest minimum wage in the country, he said.

"One thing that is lost in the minimum-wage debate is that consumers will ultimately pay for the minimum wage increase in the form of higher costs at the checkout counter, making the goods and services even harder for the lowest earning workers to afford," he said.

Chamber members have told staff if the minimum-wage initiative passes, they will be forced not to expand or hire additional workers.

"The recession has hit Missouri employers hard and they are attempting to keep their doors open and not let people go, but initiatives like this put a chilling effect on the economy and make it even harder for small business owner to survive," Moore said.

mmiller@semissourian.com

388-3646

Pertinent address:

841 N. Kingshighway, Cape Girardeau, MO