IOWA VIEW

Polk County needs a $15 per hour minimum wage

Cherie Mortice

Polk County needs a $15 per hour minimum wage. The married mom with four kids who’s worked at a Des Moines fast food restaurant for more than 15 years making $10.50 per hour needs it. The Valley High teenager who works more than 20 hours a week to pay rent for him and his single working mother needs it. The single east side grandmother who lost her job at 63 and had to take the first job she could find at $7.45 per hour needs it.

Demonstrators demanding an increase in the minimum wage march in the streets on April 14, 2016 in Chicago.

The folks who need $15 per hour serve our food, provide daycare for our kids, care for our elderly loved ones, clean our offices, respond to our emergencies and deliver our mail. They make our communities run, and they can’t make ends meet.

Study: A third of Iowans don't earn enough to pay for basic living

That grandmother needs $13.44 per hour just to make ends meet, and that’s without any savings for retirement, as if she can simply work until she dies. That teenager’s mother needs to make $22.82 per hour to put a roof over her son’s head and allow him to focus on school. That mom and her husband each need to make $18.16 per hour to support three children, so imagine what the number is with four.

These people in Polk County are everywhere, and their stories are real. What is not real are the myths about raising the wage spread by corporate interests and business associations. More than 70 years of data about wage increases in the U.S. prove that rumors of unemployment or businesses closing from higher wages aren’t the doomsday predictions they’re preached to be.

Des Moines' minimum wage is higher than you think

There are also plenty of myths spread about the hardworking folks who work low wage jobs. People say they are lazy, undeserving, only teenagers making extra spending money, and my personal favorite — that the minimum wage they earn “was never meant to be a living wage.” That they just need to go to school, work harder, find a better job.

A group of fast-food workers, home care and child care workers, and community supporters march through the streets of Des Moines on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, to the steps of the Iowa Events Center, where the final GOP debate before the Iowa Caucus was being held. The workers were marching in support of a higher minimum wage and a union.

The truth? Raising the minimum wage, even a significant wage raise phased in over time, doesn’t cause job loss. That’s not speculation, that’s a fact. We know jobs aren’t lost because of a study of 288 neighboring counties on state lines where only one state raised the wage and employment stayed the same. We know because more than 600 economists wrote a letter to President Barack Obama explaining that fact. We know because places like Seattle, Los Angeles, and our very own Johnson County raised the wage and employment levels are still the same.

Could a Polk minimum wage hike trigger city opt-outs?

The truth about low wage workers?  These people work really hard — often times at more than one job — to support families and survive. The job they work should pay them a living wage. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said when he signed legislation establishing our nation’s first minimum wage, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country ... by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living.”

More truth: People with more money in their pockets spend it. They pay rent, buy food, pay for childcare, buy gas, clothes and school supplies. Businesses hire more people because there is increased demand for their products. The local economy grows, and businesses benefit even after lobbying against a wage increase.

Cherie Mortice

Polk County can reap the benefits of raising the wage, but only if the Board of Supervisors works for the welfare of the people they represent. Now is the time for bold action that is good for our communities, good for our workers and good for our businesses. Polk County Supervisors, raise the wage to $15 per hour.

CHERIE MORTICE is a Des Moines resident and president of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement board of directors. Contact: cmortice@gmail.com