Whether it’s the Chamber of Commerce, Retail Merchants Association, the Restaurant Association, or just about any other staple opponent to the minimum wage, their talking points are tired, rote and too often contrary to facts.
But this isn’t a new phenomenon. A letter from the Brooklyn Merchant Bakers Association dated Aug. 13, 1937, “chiefly objected to the bill’s maximum work hours and overtime pay provisions.” The bill here refers to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. However, the group’s complaint that the bill would increase the cost of production and the price of baked goods for consumers is eerily similar to objections over the minimum wage.
Another oft-repeated talking point from opponents is that the minimum wage was created as a starting wage for teenagers entering the workforce. Though this blatant (and convenient) rewriting of history is repeatedly corrected by minimum wage advocates, it persists nonetheless. In fact, we can look to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s own words in a speech he gave in support of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, as evidence:
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
A 2013 report published by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) looks at 100 years of opposition to the minimum wage.
I can attest that, at least in Hawaii, these oppositional talking points haven’t changed. Despite a preponderance of evidence contradicting the fearmongering, increases in the minimum wage have not caused the financial sky to fall. One might practically expect nothing less from industries that rely on cheap labor for their profits.
Industry groups, like the Restaurant Association for example, have for a century warned that forced wage increases would lead to business closures and job losses. The NELP report highlights in one of its many figures the steady growth of the restaurant industry from 2007 to 2013 as compared to an increase in the federal minimum wage over the same period. In Hawaii, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, between 2014 and 2018:
>> The number of people employed by small businesses (defined as up to 500 employees) increased by 3% to 275,076.
>> The total number of small businesses grew by 8% to 137,328.
>> The number of very small businesses (up to 20 employees) grew by 3% to 21, 541.
It should be noted that during that same period, in Hawaii, the unemployment rate dropped each year the minimum wage increased.
In fact, there is no reliable statistically significant data that I could find that shows a direct correlation between business closures and increases in the minimum wage.
Our elected officials, again and again, refuse to base their decision-making on facts and evidence. Rather, they succumb to the fearmongering. Or, maybe it’s not the fearmongering at all, but rather the substantial financial support their campaigns receive from the likes of the Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Association, etc.
It is my hope that our elected officials will base their decision-making on the preponderance of evidence regarding the minimum wage, and not the patently false centenarian talking points of the collective of business associations.
Josh Frost, a progressive activist who has been working on the minimum wage for a decade, has a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University; he currently chairs the Democratic Party of Hawaii labor caucus and owns a consulting business.
