Write to the Point
After a month and a few days into life in Washington state where the minimum wage took a hike upward from $9.47 to $11 per hour on Jan. 1, it was time to see what was happening.
Statewide the measure passed by just under 60 percent, and not at all surprising, voters in King County, where a $20 bill vanishes instantly for a sandwich and a beer, I-1433 was up by 72-28 in a Seattle Times report.
As the guy who covers business here on the West Plains, this is, and will be a subject for future stories on page 3. But to look objectively at it this early was premature at best — not unlike, perhaps, the glowing arguments for passage of this “one size fits all,” mandate that blankets businesses border to border.
And that was the concern all through the lead up to I-1433 where, according to numbeo.com, a one-bedroom apartment is over 50-percent less to rent in Spokane versus Seattle.
Honestly, I was looking —hoping in fact — to find even the most minor success story for I-1433 on Nov. 8 that not only will eventually mandate employers pay new workers $13.50 an hour by 2020, but provide leave as well.
I went looking for news of some early happy endings with I-1433 in place, but they were impossible to find.
What has been much easier are those darned unintended consequences. It’s a factor that all the esteemed Ivy League economists, so often enlisted to run numbers on things like I-1433, have not yet found a mathematical real world formula to inject in determining outcomes.
The first time it hit my wallet, that I was aware at least, came when placing an order at the Cheney Zips. All of a sudden fries — which I never really needed — were an additional cost with an entre.
“It will raise the minimum wage for more than 730,000 workers, putting $600 more in the pockets of minimum-wage workers every month,” I-1433 sponsor Raise Up Washington touted on its website.
But imagine how they failed to take into account a couple of mothers I know who got the news their daycare was going up by a minimum of $800 a year. Neither was subject to an automatic raise, but now have to figure out how to budget for the increase.
Fifty workers, a small number of the 1,000 who work in the many Davenport Hotel operations in Spokane, didn’t get a raise. They were instead sent to the unemployment line as part of the hotel’s effort to cover an estimated $3 million in additional operating costs.
Your golf will cost more, as was illustrated in a story last week on The Fairways. And I can hear the naysayers right now, “Oh, those poor, poor golfers.” But consider that wage increases are a mere drop in the bucket when compared to what it costs to water the grass just to keep the place open.
While there have been those numerous expected areas where adding just north of a buck-fifty per hour to the paychecks of many entry-level workers would have its impact, surprises came in the darnedest packages.
Like how our highways will look with a lower level of primarily young people, who, in the summer, pick up litter for the Department of Ecology. Washington taxpayers, you will be asked, through your legislators, to increase DOE’s budget by $2 million to cover the effects of I-1433.
And the biggest employer in Cheney, Eastern Washington University, will see some significant consequences with its minimum wage workforce that numbers over 2,400. While good for now as budgets are in place, cuts could affect about 15 percent of one part of the employment pool, and full implementation could cost the school $2 million.
As I pursue what will be future news coverage of how I-1433 has affected how business operates in our area, my hope is that there will be as many success stories to counter the struggles people are finding they face with the law in place.
Quite honestly with how things have started, I’m not at all optimistic.
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.
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