To the editor:
The recent election win of Phil Murphy for governor has brought up the question of whether he will carry out his campaign promise to raise the minimum wage to $15. The answer to whether it should be raised should be an emphatic “no.”
The city of Seattle in 2014 chose to raise the minimum wage to $15 from $9.47 an hour by 2021 with pay increases every few years. A University of Washington study conducted in 2016 found that when the minimum wage was raised just to $13, there was a 9 percent decrease in hours for hourly workers. Hourly workers also earned $125 less each month after the wage increase to $13 an hour.
A $15 minimum wage increase will hurt Hillsborough’s numerous small businesses, as they will have the choice of firing workers and cutting hours, or raising prices and risk less customers coming in. Only large corporations like McDonalds and Walmart will be able to shoulder the new pay increase for their workers without raising their prices to dramatically. For a person who claims that his actions will help out lower class people, Murphy’s plan to raise the minimum wage will do nothing but hurt the lower class, and give corporations a stranglehold on all things in New Jersey.
Eric Cowen
Hillsborough