…One low wage to exploit them all!
This is the idea of state senator John Braun (R-Centralia, of course). He hates that some Washington towns pay their workers more than other Washington towns. So this maniac is proposing a bill that would make the state’s minimum wage of $9.32 per hour the ceiling and not the floor.
It would make it illegal for a town to legislate higher a minimum wage than the state, even places with higher cost of living like Seattle.
Braun wants to rid the state of Washington of its “burdensome” habit of progressive towns – like SeaTac and Seattle – wanting to pay its workers a living wage unlike crappy, conservative towns – like Braun’s Centralia – wanting to pay their workers in shiny pennies (if at all).
Here’s Braun’s plan, via Q13:
Think about all the city limits you cross as you drive through the Puget Sound region and all the different minimum wages you could have in all those places and how you would process that payroll…that gets really hard really quick, and why do we want to do this?
There’s a new slogan the state’s GOP can run with – “It’s the payroll, stupid.” Overlook the fact that forcing Washingtonians to lose pay in the name of paperwork makes absolutely NO sense accounting to the laws of business management since each individual location would have to track its inventory, sales, etc anyway.
But Braun does stop there. According to the report “Braun’s bill would also prevent cities and counties from adding worker benefits beyond the state level.”
And if you think that this is just some Tea Party b.s. that has no chance of passage then remember this – that part of the bill passed the senate last year!
