MINIMUM WAGE POLL STIRS DEBATE

A Reform Organization of Welfare (ROWEL) official is encouraged with the results of a statewide poll that shows voters leaning toward a proposal that would increase the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour.

The campaign manager for SOS (Save Our Jobs) Coalition, which opposes Resolution A, which would give workers the highest starting minimum wage in the nation, is disappointed with the poll, commissioned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KMOX radio.

Of 420 likely voters polled, conducted by the Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Missouri at Columbia, 57 percent favored the increase and 34 percent opposed it. Nine percent were noncommittal.

The poll has a margin of error of 4.8 percentage points.

The results were not really that surprising, said Jeanette Mott Oxford, ROWEL executive director, who was in Cape Girardeau Monday to discuss a cost-of-living survey.

Mark Rhoads of SOS, headquartered in Jefferson City, was disappointed that a more detailed question was not addressed in the poll.

Pollsters, said Rhoads, were asked only if they supported a referendum that would raise the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour from $4.75.

"We think that a more detailed explanation on Proposition A should have been addressed," said Rhoads. "The people should have been told that the wage will go to $6.50 in 1998, $6.75 in 1999, and increase 15 cents per hour each year after that.

Rhoads contends that the poll would have turned up less voter support for the issue had interviewers read the full ballot question.

"My feeling is that the survey is flawed," said Rhoads. "We're confident that Missourians who have all the facts won't support imposing the nation's highest minimum wage." SOS will continue its blitz against the minimum-wage plan until election day.

ROWEL, a 1,000-member statewide organization headquartered in St. Louis and working to reduce poverty and prejudice, supports the minimum-wage increases.

"We don't have the assets to conduct media blitzes," said Oxford, "but we worked early to get voters registered."

Oxford said that due to ROWEL efforts, as many 40,000 new voters will be going to the polls this year.

Proposition A would supersede the new federal minimum wage, which jumped to $4.75 an hour on Oct. 1 and is set to increase to $5.15 an hour next Sept. 1.

Of those polled, women, blacks, people with lower incomes and people without a college degree backed the plan in larger numbers than men, whites and those with higher incomes and a degree.

Pollsters made their random telephone calls across the state last Monday through Wednesday.

During the same period, opponents (SOS) of the wage increase began the television phase of what they say will be a $1 million advertising campaign criticizing the proposal.

"The voters are going to see that Proposition A would have a very, significant impact to government services," Rhoads said.

Rhodes and other opponents, led by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, warn that higher costs from the wage boost would force businesses to lay off employees or move to neighboring states with lower minimum wages. It would also increase state and local government costs.

Advocates, however, say a higher state minimum is needed to restore the buying power of the working poor, which they say dissipated when the minimum wage was stagnant for nine years in the 1980s. They said the state's economy would benefit because low-paid workers would have more money to spend.

Oxford and ROWEL officials were in Southeast Missouri Monday to discuss how Proposition A will impact welfare families.

"In our state and nation, there is an outcry to cut welfare programs and put parents to work," said Oxford. "Yet, there is resistance to raising the minimum wage to a living wage that covers costs of a family's basic needs, like food, rent and utilities."

A cost-of-living study was recently commissioned by the Campaign to Reward Work, a coalition of religious, community and labor organizations working in support of Proposition A on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The study revealed that it would require an hourly income of at least $6.95 an hour for a single mother to support herself and one child in Cape Girardeau. Further, said the report, it would take $9.57 per hour for a single mother to support two children, and for a family with both parents and two children, total incomes must be $14.18, which is equivalent to each parent making at least $7.09 an hour.

Even with the new minimum-wage proposals, many families would fall short of a bottom-line-budget, said Oxford. "These numbers suggest that a higher wage level is clearly needed."