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Higher Minimum Wage And Paid Sick Leave In Alaska

 

Tony Knowles is a former Anchorage mayor and former Alaska governor, who has owned several restaurants throughout his career. In his abbreviated publication below Tony proposes increasing the minimum wage and sick leave benefits to make Alaska more competitive in the U.S. labor market, in order to avoid a sharper decline  in population of the country's coldest state, ranking 48th the population in the US.

Tourist businesses lining the Parks Highway outside of the Denali National Park entrance, at a strip nicknamed "Glitter Gulch," are seen on May 5, 2024. Photo: Yereth Rosen / Alaska Beacon

The publication shows that hourly wages in Alaska and the U.S. as a whole have fallen significantly since the late 1960s, and that the standard of living and disposable income of citizens have declined over the past half-century. This is especially true for Alaska, which has the sixth-highest cost of living among the fifty U.S. states, as the former governor states.

Tony has both worked for hourly wages and for many years operated restaurant businesses paying hourly wages. After graduation in 1968 he roughnecked in California for the “high” wage of some $3.50/hour before the new oil discovery in Prudhoe Bay enticed him to move to Alaska where he again found employment roughnecking on the North Slope for the even “higher” wages of about $4.50/hour until he decided to try my hand in business. 

He started up Grizzly Burger on the corner where C Street terminated at a two-lane Northern Lights Boulevard. In 1969 the year the first Grizzly Burger opened and in 1975 when he started Downtown Deli, the minimum wage was $2.10/hour. Today, it is only $11.73.  Adjusted for inflation, an hourly wage of $2.10 in 1969 would be worth more than $17 in 2024.

Unable to get legislative or administration support for increasing the minimum wage, citizens throughout Alaska have successfully gathered the support necessary to put an initiative on the ballot to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15/hour over the next three years and to implement a paid sick leave program. 

This isn’t the first time the Alaska public has taken the lead on improving pay rates.  In 2014, the last minimum wage citizen initiative passed was on the ballot because of the legislative and gubernatorial failure to act.  The Alaska public responded with an overwhelming 69% positive vote.  Tony believes voters will again overwhelmingly support Ballot Measure No. 1 based on the economic and social benefits it provides to the working families and businesses of Alaska.

Alaska’s current minimum wage of $11.73/hour is around the median of all states’ wage rates. There are 22 states that have higher minimum wages, including Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Florida, Oregon and Washington.  But then let’s compare wages to the cost of living of all states.  Here Alaska has the dubious distinction of ranking sixth overall among its peers.  Looking more deeply into this statistic we find that Alaska ranks first in the cost of food and health care and third in terms of transportation costs.

So it is easy to see that the woeful combination of the high cost of living with median wage rates puts many Alaska families unable to make ends meet. And these economics are only exacerbated by the steady drum of inflation over the last many decades.  It puts pressure on people to move away from the state and out of the job market to more favorable locales.  An unstable work force, or shortage of workers, is not good for business.

This initiative also establishes paid sick leave for businesses which makes economic sense and ensures fair living standards. Under the initiative, employees earn access to paid sick leave at the rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked with a ceiling of 56 hours of paid sick leave — reduced to 40 hours for employers of under 15 workers. Currently, 18 states have already realized the benefits of paid sick leave and passed laws implementing this policy. 

It is widely accepted that employees who go to work when they are sick but can’t afford to lose their wages are not only hurting their own health but also are risking the well-being of the rest of the workforce.  This was brought home to us during the Covid-19 epidemic.  Businesses are not well served if there is an outbreak of disease which contaminates both their employees and their customers.  Additionally, the use of sick leave days should be extended to enable a parent to provide care for a sick child rather than sending the child to school or a day care center that would endanger other kids as well as teachers.

Ballot Measure No. 1 will make Alaska a better place to work and live. It will benefit workers and businesses.  It will improve Alaska’s economy by attracting and keeping a pool of healthy, equitably-paid workers for our businesses, stated Tony Knowles.

Source: Alaska Beacon

30.10.2024