March 25th, 2019 by WCBC Radio
The House Minority Caucus this morning sent a letter to Governor Larry Hogan requesting his veto of House Bill 166 and Senate Bill 280, legislation increasing Maryland's Minimum Wage to $15.00 per hour.
The letter outlined the Caucus’ strong misgivings with the legislation, including concerns that increasing Maryland’s minimum wage will likely reduce the number of available jobs and harm the very people it aims to help. The letter was sent by House Minority Leader Nic Kipke and House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga, on behalf of the entire House Minority Caucus. "We all want people to make more money, allowing them to provide for their families and achieve their goals", said House Minority Leader Nic Kipke. "However we face a harsh reality that with this forced wage increase jobs will disappear, either because businesses reduce their number of employees to stay afloat, businesses relocate to another state, or businesses close altogether. Higher wages do not matter if the jobs themselves disappear."
The letter also highlights the manner in which some members of the General Assembly treated the pleas of small business owners, including the accusation that they were "crying wolf" when expressing concerns with the legislation. "We have worked under a belief that the majority party in the General Assembly simply does not understand the impact these changes have to businesses", said House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga. But it has become increasingly obvious that it is not that they do not understand, but rather that many of our colleagues simply seem not to care about the tremendous negative impact of their actions. That is terribly unfortunate."
The full text of the letter is available here.
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March 25, 2019 at 3:19 pm, Alex Rosenheim said:
A job that pays less than a living wage is by definition one that means the employee will qualify for and require government assistance to prevent going without necessities like food, heat, housing and medicine. In other words, a below-living-wage job is socialism paid for with our taxes.
Companies would lose more profit by not having necessary jobs filled than they’d lose by increasing wages incrementally to above poverty wages. So, there is a financial advantage for employers raising wages.
And by mandating this statewide, this does not put a particular company at a disadvantage compared to competitors who are willing to pay slavelike wages to their employees.
It is a win for all Marylanders.