Hourly Update

Petitions filed to put minimum wage initiative on AZ ballot

PHOENIX - Supporters of a proposal to give Arizona's minimum-wage earners a 31 percent pay increase filed petitions on Monday to put the question on the state's November general election ballot. The initiative proposal would create a new state minimum wage of $6.75 an hour, up from the current federal minimum hourly wage of $5.15 that now applies in Arizona. If approved, the new minimum wage would take effect in 2007. The wage then would be adjusted once each year according to cost-of-living index. A coalition of labor unions and other activists filed petitions that they said carried signatures from approximately 209,400 voter signatures, well over the required 122,612 signatures. Election officials will check a sampling of the signatures to determine whether enough are valid to qualify the measure for the ballot. "At a time when there is so much effort put into dividing Americans, we have found across-the-board bipartisan support for increasing the minimum wage so that hardworking Arizonans will have a fighting chance to support their families," said Rebekah Friend, president of the Arizona AFL-CIO. Monday's filing came five days after the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate rejected a proposal to hike the federal minimum wage that has been in place for nearly a decade. The rejected measures included one by Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to raise the hourly minimum to $5.85 this year, to $6.55 a year later and $7.25 a year after that. Supporters contend that the higher minimum wage is needed so working men and women can support their families and said that many affected workers are adults, not teenagers. "They work and they live in poverty and they struggle, and they work hard to raise their children in this current minimum wage," said initiative supporter Alicia Russell, a Phoenix mortgage-loan officer. Critics argue that the minimum wage is intended to be mostly for entry-level workers and that raising it would mean employers couldn't afford to hire as many people. Opponents have formed a group, Jobs First, to campaign against the Arizona initiative. The group reported paying $25,000 to a polling firm. The opposition group's chairman, Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association President Steve Chucri, did not immediately return a call for comment. Minimum-wage proposals could be on the November ballots of several other states, including Nevada and Montana, and the measures are seen as a way for Democratic-oriented groups to boost voter turnout. "Yes, it will definitely help Democratic candidates, no doubt, but that's not the purpose why we're doing it," said state Rep. Steve Gallardo, a Phoenix Democrat helping to lead the initiative campaign. "Our purpose is to increase the minimum wage for the entire state ... it's going to help everybody." Gallardo said he sponsored minimum-wage bills in the Republican-led Legislature during each of the past four years. "It would fall in a desk drawer and never see the light of day," he said.