Seattle City Council Approves $15 Minimum Wage

Seattle has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, the highest in the nation. The city council approved the measure Monday in a unanimous vote.

The minimum wage issue has dominated politics in the liberal Washington state municipality for months.

A boisterous crowd of mostly labor activists packed the council chambers for the vote. They held signs reading "15 Now," chanted, cheered and occasionally jeered when amendments they favored were voted down.
    
The plan phases in the wage increase over several years, with slower implementation for small businesses.

Will this kind of hike in wages help the poor? Dr. Brian Baugus, a business professor at Regent University explains this and more, on CBN Newswatch, June 3.

Businesses with more than 500 employees have at least three years to enact the salary hike.

Small business owners say they'll have to pass increased costs on to customers, with the owner of a family pizza parlor in Seattle saying his $24 pizza will now cost $27.

Other restaurant owners who objected to the measure say the change will force them to curb expansion plans, meaning they won't be able to hire new employees.

They also said they will have to cut hours for current employees.

"I realize for business, it seems too radical, and I realize for some it seems not radical enough," Mayor Ed Murray told The Washington Post.

"I think it's an answer to the radical experiment that's been going on in this country since the 1980s," he continued. "It's destroyed the middle class, and it almost destroyed the economy... It's time to take the risk."