Four states had minimum wage referendums on their ballots last week, and voters approved all of them.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington state already had minimum wages that are higher than the federal standard of $7.25 an hour. The biggest wage increase approved Tuesday is in Maine, where voters agreed to raise the pay from the current $7.50 to $12 per hour by 2020.
Arizona ($8.05 per hour) and Colorado ($8.31) also approved raising the minimum to $12 by 2020. The fourth state, Washington, currently has a $9.47 minimum wage and is raising it to $13.50 by 2020.
As it stands now, Mississippi is one of only 20 states that use the federal $7.25 per hour. Twelve states are already $9 an hour or higher. Washington, D.C., leads the way at $10.50, followed by California and Massachusetts at $10 each.
For years there has been a debate over whether a higher minimum wage reduces the number of low-paying jobs for underskilled workers and young people seeking their first job, or whether it’s a necessary adjustment to guarantee adult workers a “living wage.”
The argument for keeping the minimum wage at $7.25 an hour is this: As the cost of labor goes up, managers have a greater incentive to reduce expenses. One way to do that is to have fewer employees. Another way, and it’s kind of amusing that the people who picket McDonald’s for $15 an hour haven’t figured this out, is to use machines to do more work.
After all, the fallout from increasing labor mechanization helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency. Wage increases encourage this mechanization. If companies can use robots to help make cars and other complicated products, they can surely figure out how to automate more of the fast-food process, for example. So minimum-wage advocates who believe their hourly pay should be doubled could be asking for their jobs to be eliminated.
The case for increasing the minimum is partly political: Workers will appreciate a government-mandated pay raise. Humanitarian impulses also may play a role. Finally, the minimum has not increased since the summer of 2009, which would argue for a 12 percent increase just to keep up with inflation.
But there is a much easier way to get part-time, low-pay employees more money without raising the minimum wage at all.
When the Democratic Congress in 2009 passed the Affordable Care Act, a provision that might have backfired reduced the number of hours that part-time employees could work in a week without becoming eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance. Part-timers used to be able to work anything less than 40 hours a week; the ACA, best known as Obamacare, cut that to 30 hours.
The intent was obvious: Coax employers into covering more of their workers. Maybe some did that, but others just cut the hours — and thus the pay — of part-time workers.
Obamacare may have provided medical insurance for 20 million more people, but it did so at the cost of several hours per week for plenty of workers who get paid at or near the minimum wage. Restoring those hours could do more for them than any increase in the hourly wage. That’s what Republican lawmakers and President-elect Donald Trump might focus on as they take up their pledge to repeal or reform Obamacare.
