The conversation right now about the minimum wage is veering off in the wrong direction. Thatâs because all the parties are not showing up for the debate.
Take the wave of small-business owners saying recently that the implementation of an immediate $15 minimum wage would be catastrophic for them. Peter Aaron, owner of Elliott Bay Book Company, has said heâd have to cut employees, which could hurt his ability to serve customers. At a recent town hall meeting of the mayorâs and the city councilâs minimum-wage committees, a Dickâs Drive-In vice president, Jasmine Donovan, said that a wage hike could cause Dickâs to cut their famously generous worker benefits and raise prices on food.
But there is a notable group that isnât showing up to town halls and isnât making their views known: big business.
All the Targets and Walmarts have to do right now to avoid getting the stink of a difficult conversation on them is to stay the hell out of the wayâwhich lets them off the hook way too easily. A conversation that pits local workers and local small-business owners against each other is a fight that benefits big business more than anyone. And itâs big business reaping record profits, the big businesses that employ more than 60 percent of low-wage workers, and the big businesses that are the egregious offenders in the wage fightânot small businesses, many of which struggle to stay afloat.
Did you see someone from Target get up at that town hall meeting and chat about how much they love their employees but donât mind if they have to live in subsidized housing because, shucks, thereâs just no other way to make the business work? A top dog from McDonaldâs or Burger King getting up to say theyâre proud to offer jobs in this town and itâs just too dang bad that many of those jobs strand people in an endless cycle of crippling poverty? No, you didnât.
And itâs too damn bad.
âMcDonaldâs made $5.6 billion last year,â says Sage Wilson, spokesman for Working Washington, which helped organize last yearâs fast-food strikes. âIâm confident they can find a way to get to $15 ASAP.â But, he continues, âI think thereâs other community-based businesses where thereâs room for a conversation about how to get there.â
The groups and activists fighting hardest for the wage raise? They see a distinction between huge national chains and the indie shop down the street. And 15 Now, an organization commonly cast as stern and uncompromising, says they see local small businesses as their natural allies in this campaign. âOne of the things thatâs important to point out,â says Phillip Locker, a 15 Now organizer, âis that the problem that small businesses face is not high wages, fundamentally. The problem is the pressure theyâre under from big businesses that can outcompete them⌠We would say to small businesses that theyâre being manipulated and used by the people who every day are driving them out of business.â
Locker says 15 Now is interested in addressing meaningful ways to support local and smaller businesses through new policies in tandem with raising the wage. âNo association of small businesses is going to get an $8.7 billion tax break from the State of Washington,â he argues. âBut Boeing can, and does.â Tax breaks could help small businesses, tooâif they were designed to. âWe want to be working together with small businesses to address the unfair competition they face from big business,â says Locker, âto restructure the tax policy of our city and state.â He also mentions other ways to support local businessesâlike addressing land-use codes that incentivize crappy chains on the bottom floors of all those condo buildings, or adding excise taxes on big-box retailers, franchises, or financial institutions.
The wage raise itself would undoubtedly help local businesses in another way, says Wilson: âPeople not getting paid enough money means that people donât buy enough stuff to keep the economy functioning the way itâs structured now.â Big businesses have âpioneered the modelâ of poverty-level wages and spread it across the country, to the detriment of mom-and-pop outfits. âI donât think they want to be paying their people so little,â Wilson says of beloved local bookstore owners and restaurateurs. âI donât think there are a lot of folks who are happy with that system, either.â
But a lot of small-business owners are not political, theyâre not sitting around perfecting their rhetoricâtheyâre just trying to order the right stuff for their inventory and make payroll and get through the week. And this move toward what they see as a new expense understandably freaks âem out.
So itâs the publicâs jobâand the politiciansââto keep big businessâs feet to the fire and create a policy that will raise tens of thousands of people out of poverty, while strengthening the local economy.