Coalition Petitions to Raise Minimum Wage (Editorial)

Give Arkansas A Rai$e Now, a coalition of more than two dozen faith, community and nonprofit groups, needs 80,570 signatures to get its proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. That’s likely to happen.

That amendment, if it passes as an early poll suggests, would raise the state minimum wage to $6.15 an hour from the current $5.15 an hour, and the wage would be adjusted for inflation each year.

Backers of the amendment include the Southern Good Faith Fund, Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families, the Arkansas AFL-CIO, Arkansas ACORN and the Arkansas NAACP.

The Rev. Stephen Copley, a United Methodist pastor in North Little Rock and chairman of GARN, said, “Raising the minimum wage in Arkansas is just the right thing to do, both from a moral perspective and the perspective of economic justice. No Arkansas family should work hard, play by the rules and still live in poverty.”

GARN says an increase in the minimum wage would affect an estimated 127,000 working Arkansans. Of those, 80 percent are age 20 or older and 53 percent work full-time, however, about 56,000 make the minimum wage according to the state AFL-CIO.

We agree the minimum wage should be raised. We’re not convinced it should come in the form of a constitutional amendment.

Under the current federal minimum wage, a person working full time would be making only $10,712 a year, which is about $1,000 above the official poverty level for an individual ($9,654).

No thoughtful person can honestly believe someone can live decently on that in today’s economy, and particularly no one with dependents.

Fortunately, most Arkansas businesses pay their employees far more than minimum wage. Even the much maligned Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pays more, and its CEO, Lee Scott, favors increasing the minimum wage.

It’s doubtful that even fast-food restaurants in a highly competitive area like Northwest Arkansas could get by with paying minimum wage.

Despite no change in the minimum wage in the past nine years, when the cost of basic life necessities has gone up considerably, Congress has made no move to change it although our elected representatives have raised their own pay by 23 percent during that time. So movements have begun to bypass Congress and work to gain passage in the states, and it looks to be working.

GARN said a poll by Opinion Research Associates of Little Rock showed that 87 percent said they would definitely or probably vote for the proposed constitutional amendment.

Some hardliners may think we are abandoning our traditional free-market stance. Perhaps. But we agree it is “immoral” that any Arkansans willing to work full-time can be paid so little that they must make choices between heating their homes or buying medicine or food.

Ideally, Congress should do the right thing. But the second-best idea is not to install a wage formula in our state Congress. It is for the state Legislature to impose a new statewide minimum wage. Constitutional changes that seem completely reasonable and rational have often had surprising unintended consequences that are very hard to undo.