Pople focus on food service because that is where the wages are artificially low because servers are supposed to depend on their tips. Raising the minimum wage has many other consequences - here is just one of them. From The Arizona Republic:
After minimum-wage hike, Arizona companies serving people with disabilities to face a funding crisis
Companies that serve the state's most vulnerable individuals say they may not survive the state's minimum-wage hike unless they get a pay raise of their own from Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona Legislature.
The companies rely heavily on minimum-wage workers to help care for individuals with developmental disabilities. And the state has not increased the funding for such care in the wake of the voter-approved minimum-wage increase. Under Proposition 206, the minimum wage rises to $10 an hour on Jan. 1.
The hit to the more than 600 companies that serve this population is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Without an increase in state funding, many companies say they will have to cut services while others say they won't survive.
A bit more - one company's example:
Barkley is president and CEO of Tungland Corp., a Tucson-based company that provides services for individuals statewide and in other states. He has hundreds of employees who staff group homes, day programs, employment programs and in-home support services. He has 673 employees in Arizona who currently earn less than $10 an hour.
Raising wages and funding the new paid sick time that also was part of Prop. 206 will cost $2.5 million next year.
Barkley said he would love to pay more than that, but the state rates don't allow it. Already, he said, he has 90 percent employee turnover, and 20 percent of his job openings are unfilled.
So the state dictates what they will pay for one of Tungland's employees to care for a disabled person but they will also artificially increase the cost to Tungland for that employees salary. Unreal and not well thought out. Politics writ large. Of course, the state is ramping up it's budget to care for these poor people:
"Over the past seven years, our organization, employees and consumers have experienced the impact of multiple funding cuts by the Arizona Division of Developmental Disabilities, which have not been fully restored to date," he wrote. "Current funding is 7.5 percent less than it was in 2009, and when adjusted for inflation, the funding impact is 21 percent less than in 2009."
21% funding cut yet they want these companies to pay more for their workers. These bureaucrats are living in a bubble - there is no personal accountability - nobody gets punished if they screw up, they just get shunted over to another department - frequently with a pay raise. Stupidity like this should hurt.
Leave a comment