Campaign for higher wage
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Pederson speaks to supporters of a measure to establish a $6.75 minimum wage in Arizona. He is flanked by state Reps. David Lujan and Kyrsten Sinema, both District 15 Democrats. Prop. 202 backers gathered at a rally on the Senate lawn Oct. 11.

Surrounded by firefighters, union workers and community activists, proponents of an initiative to establish an Arizona minimum wage of $6.75 an hour appeared at the Capitol to tout the measure as a moral imperative and to promote a multi-city bus tour supporting mandatory wage increases.
Arizona, which currently has no minimum wage, follows the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour. If passed by voters in the Nov. 7 election, the state’s minimum wage would take effect next Jan. 1.
Governor Napolitano, U.S. Senate candidate Jim Pederson, Reps. Steve Gallardo, D-13, Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, and David Lujan, D-15, attended to show support for Proposition 202.
Mr. Gallardo, chair of the Vote Yes on 202 ballot initiative committee, said that legislative efforts to increase the minimum wage have failed, but the idea is strongly agreed upon by “both sides of the aisle,” the business community and activist organizations.
“It is a benefit to working families in the state of Arizona,” said Mr. Gallardo, who recently replaced Arizona AFL-CIO President Rebekah Friend as committee chair. “It is a moral issue.”
The bus is scheduled to tour Prescott, Sedona, Flagstaff, Winslow, Tuba City, Show Low and Globe. It recently returned from Casa Grande, Yuma, Bisbee, Sierra Vista, Tucson and Tempe.
Mr. Pederson, a Democrat, criticized Congress and his opponent, Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, for ignoring the plight of lower wage workers, and said that no “mainstream economists” would relate higher minimum wages with job losses.
“There has not been an increase in the federal minimum wage in 10 years,” he said. “Yet we have senators and congressmen that grant themselves a raise almost every year or two,” Mr. Pederson said.
Ms. Napolitano also blamed the “current configuration” of the U.S. Congress for not raising the minimum pay rate and said that inflation and increased costs have seriously eroded the purchasing power of the minimum wage.
“We’ve been going backwards, not forwards on the minimum wage,” she said.
Opponents: 5,000 jobs will be lost
Criticism of Prop. 202 has increased as business and interest groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Restaurant Association, and the Employment Policies Institute predict the initiative, if passed, would adversely affect the state’s least-skilled workers and open companies to unnecessary government interference.
Michelle Bolton, director of the Arizona chapter of the NFIB, likens the initiative to a “haunted house,” with a “well-manicured lawn,” citing a recent study by Dr. David MacPherson, a Florida State University professor, that stated 5,000 jobs would be lost immediately if the initiative passes.
Mr. MacPherson’s study is also referred to by the Employment Policies Institute, which opposes Prop. 202. The institute sent a press release in late September citing the professor’s claim that 70 percent of the benefits would go to families that are not poor and that families earning less than $25,000 a year would bear one-third of the resulting job loss.
“The cruel irony of minimum wage hikes is that they actually hurt the very people they are intended to help by jeopardizing the jobs of low-skilled adults,” said Mike Flynn, legislative director for the EPI.
The National Restaurant Association is attacking the initiative’s annual minimum wage increase that adjusts for inflation and rises in cost of living expenses, which it says would set the minimum wage on “auto-pilot” and harm companies by driving up costs.
The association also attacked a provision in the initiative’s language, and in a similar measure to go before Ohio voters, that it says would allow unions, special interest groups, political appointees — virtually anyone — to file complaints on the behalf of others and gain access to personal information such as Social Security numbers.
“Voters in Ohio and Arizona need to read the fine print and realize they are not voting on a simple wage hike,” said Tom Foulkes, the association’s vice-president for state relations. “They could be opening the door to serious privacy violations, an exceptional threat to Arizona, which is already ranked the national leader in identity theft.”
After the press conference, Mr. Pederson, a land developer, said government intrusion concerns into records of private business owners are overplayed by a minority of the business community and are a “phony” excuse to reject the initiative.
On Oct. 11, The Associated Press reported that more than 650 economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, said they upheld a 1999 Council of Economic Advisors report that found “modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment.”
The NFIB is scheduled to hold a press conference on the Senate lawn Oct. 16 to bring attention to the initiative’s possible effects on identity theft.