Chamber urges local business, industry to comply with new minimum wage
Eye-catching headline there, huh? Kind of akin to, Commonwealth’s attorney urges local residents to comply with murder laws. I wish I was making this up, of course.
“Despite these sobering statistics, Congress has not delayed the impending minimum wage increase. Thus, employers should comply with the new federal rate,” read a memo from the Greater Augusta Chamber of Commerce that was sent to members Thursday afternoon.
The “sobering statistics” were a look at how unemployment has doubled since the May 2007 passage of legislation raising the minimum wage from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour.
“The federal minimum wage increase comes amid an ongoing recession and disagreements among economists and political commentators about what effect, if any, the hike will have on the unemployment rate,” the Chamber memo reads. And yet we get nothing indicating the disagreements among economists and political commentators about the impact, if any. Just the one side of the story. That a minimum-wage increase is bad because the Chamber of Commerce says it’s bad.
This same Chamber of Commerce, supposedly a nonprofit barred from engaging in partisan political activity as a condition of maintaining its nonprofit status, has advocated partisan Republican positions on the Employee Free Choice Act and local conservative bloc partisan positions on proposed stormwater utility fees in Waynesboro.
There’s a reason why Augusta Free Press Publishing is not renewing its membership with the Chamber this year.
- Column by Chris Graham
