Chris Christie was standing in the way.

In 2016, after Democrats who controlled the state Legislature passed a bill gradually raising the minimum wage across New Jersey to $15 per hour, the Republican governor planted himself in the produce section of a Pennington grocery store to sign a veto, stopping the movement in its tracks.

Two years later, Democrats are still in charge of the Legislature, and Christie, their biggest obstacle, has been replaced by Phil Murphy, a progressive governor who promised to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

But the state’s minimum wage is $8.60 an hour and isn’t scheduled to move anywhere close to $15 anytime soon.

What seemed like slam-dunk for Democrats has yet to move through the Legislature. And one key leader says he wants to roll back his party’s original plan by excluding teenagers and farmworkers from the higher minimum wage, setting the stage for a coming fight.

Don't Edit

Chris Christie vetoes legislation raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour at Pennington Quality Market in August 2016. (Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com)

Don't Edit

Murphy said Monday he wants lawmakers to send him a bill by the end of the year. The Legislature's final 2018 session is scheduled for Dec. 17.

“More than 1 million working families across the state, families who want nothing more than greater economic stability and for their 2019 to be a little bit brighter than their 2018, are looking for us to act,” Murphy said.

“We have three weeks. That’s plenty of time for the Legislature to get a bill through committees, onto the floors of both the Senate and Assembly and onto my desk.”

The delay has progressive advocates worried Democrats have squandered an opportunity to lift-up middle- and working-class families who can’t afford to wait. Someone working 40 hours a week at $8.60 an hour will earn $344 a week, or $17,888 a year.

“There is nowhere in the state where a single worker could make ends meet on less than $15,” said Brandon McKoy, director of government and public affairs at New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal Trenton think tank.

That organization projects $15 an hour will boost wages for between 1 million and 1.5 million workers, or about a third of the workforce. Without action, increases to the minimum wage will continue to be tied to inflation, like the hike to $8.85 set for Jan. 1.

Opponents, however, fear a sticker shock that will hasten shifts toward automation and cost jobs through slowed hiring.

Risks aside, Democrats in the Legislature say they plan to raise the minimum wage sooner rather than later.

But, first, they want to figure out which workers — your waitress or bartender, a teenage fast food worker or a farm hand —will be excluded from the higher minimum wage, raising the specter of a showdown with Murphy.

"I'm a believer in the $15 dollar minimum wage, but I'm worried about small businesses" State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has said. "The governor doesn't want any carveouts. He's said that."

Don't Edit

(Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

THE ARGUMENTS FOR $15

Even when New Jersey's minimum wage rises to $8.85 an hour in January, it will provide too little an income for New Jerseyans to afford even their most basic needs, McKoy said.

The United Way of Northern New Jersey estimated in 2015 a single adult in New Jersey would need to earn $13.78 an hour to meet those basic needs and $19.73 per hour for “better food and shelter, plus modest savings.”

New Jersey’s minimum wage today ranks among the least adequate in the U.S., McKoy added.

The minimum wage is $10.10 in Connecticut and $10.40 in New York, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Three states — California, New York and Massachusetts — and Washington D.C. are working their way up gradually to $15.

That’s one reason, McKoy said, why the Garden State’s economy struggled to bounce back from the Great Recession and lagged the nation’s recovery.

“We have a slow economy because we have so many workers earning poverty wages,” he said. “We have a consumer driven economy … and when people cannot afford their needs, businesses do not thrive.”

More money in peoples’ pockets means more to spend on goods and services. Higher wages, he argued, create new customers.

This rising tide should lift all boats, he said. He is not worried about what is called wage compression — where raises at the bottom bump salaries up to levels other workers are making.

McKoy also argues history indicates business doesn’t react with sweeping job cuts. Opponents estimated tens of thousands of people would lose their jobs in the year after the minimum wage bumped from $7.25 to $8.25. The state actually gained 90,000 that year.

Grocery prices in other jurisdictions on their way to $15 have not spiked beyond the normal impact of inflation, he said.

And as for automation, businesses are already looking to cut costs, McKoy argued.

“I really want to understand the company that’s just waiting until the minimum wage reaches a certain level to unleash its robot force,” he said. “The idea that once we get to a certain level they’re going to have more incentive to automate makes no sense.”

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST $15

Amazon made a splash with its announcement that it was raising all its U.S. employees to $15 an hour.

This was a free market at work.

Employers will lift wages when it makes sense for them, and the market — not government — should dictate what employers pay, business lobbyists say.

A 74 percent boost, when profit margins are already thin, will push prices higher and kill jobs, they argue. More businesses will rely on the kind of self-service kiosks available at QuickChek, Panera and many grocery stores.

Raise salaries for workers at the bottom of the pay scale and wage compression will follow, said Michele Siekerka, president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, which represents some 20,000 businesses here.

If a 16-year-old working behind the counter at McDonald’s gets a 74 percent raise to $15, the skilled paralegal with training and certifications is going to want a raise, too, she said.

“You’re going to have unskilled people bumping up with people with a skill set,” she said.

Business owners recognize an increase in the minimum wage is inevitable, Siekerka said. “Our main concern is making sure the pathway is slow and steady so our members can absorb the additional cost.”

One way her organization says the state can do that is through exclusions for teens, farm workers, seasonal employees and tipped workers.

Don't Edit

DAVID PIERINI

SHOULD TEEN WORKERS BE EXCLUDED?

Angie Ruiz, 17, is a high school senior in Elizabeth who works a few hours a week during the school year for a physical therapy center. She helps with the billing and, when needed, helps translate for Spanish-speaking patients.

She’s the oldest child, with siblings right behind her in their sophomore and junior years.

She earns about $10 an hour and turns her entire paycheck over to her parents.

“I never really thought about keeping the whole thing or just a percentage to myself,” she said. “It’s important to me, because right now my parents are struggling to pay the rent.”

If Ruiz could make $15 an hour instead of $10, she said, her mother could breathe a little easier.

“My mom tells me she’s really grateful she has me to help support the family,” she said. “She knows that it comes from my heart.”

In households with less than $50,000 a year in income, teens contribute 19 percent of the family income, according to a New Jersey Policy Perspective analysis.

While no bill has been revealed, some believe the teen exclusion would apply to those under age 18.

Excluding teens from a higher minimum wage creates a “dangerous incentive” for employers to discriminate against older entry-level workers and is a step backward on pay equity, said Nedia Morsy, an organizer with Make The Road New Jersey.

“A 17-year-old and a 19-year-old working at a movie theater are performing the same work, working the same number of hours. It just feels unjust to pay one more than another,” Morsy said.

Siekerka said she’s concerned about the exact opposite. Employers paying $15 an hour are going to be looking for more skilled and experienced workers, making it more difficult for 16- and 17-year-olds to land their first job.

"We don’t want to knock 16- and 17-year-olds out of the box getting their first job,” she said.

Siekerka said lawmakers could also consider a youth or training wage, which would allow employers to pay new teen workers a lower wage for a prescribed number of work hours or days. The federal minimum wage law lets employers pay workers under 20 years old a sub-minimum wage for up to 90 days.

Don't Edit

(The Express-Times)

SHOULD FARMWORKERS BE EXCLUDED?

Juan Garcia, 74, picks onions eight hours a day, every day.

He followed his brother to New Jersey, where he has spent more than 20 years working on a south Jersey produce farm and where he is paid for every box of onions his picks — 15 boxes a day, 65 bunches of onions to a box, and an hourly wage for his time spent packaging.

Garcia estimated he earns $60 to $70 a day, which doesn’t always work out to minimum wage.

He’s proud of the work he does. The vegetables his hands wrest from the earth feed families and children. But Garcia doesn’t eat much fresh produce. He shares a trailer in Sicklerville with two roommates and most days eats inexpensive rice and beans.

“It’s a heavy job, and at the end of the day what you earn isn’t enough,” he said in Spanish. “You know the costs that are in a home. It’s not enough to live with dignity like it should be.”

With $15 an hour, Garcia said he could eat a little better. More meat. Something nutritious.

“I’ve never gone to the movie theater,” he said. “I would love to.”

Garcia hopes lawmakers considering excluding workers like himself have a change of heart.

“I would say be aware of the work we do, the benefit of our work on feeding families," he said.

He would tell them “to put their hands on their hearts and minds and to try and take us into account, because we do deserve it … We want to be better and we can’t. We want a salary that is dignified for us.”

“It’s discrimination,” he said. “Work is work.”

Farmworkers have never been carved out of New Jersey’s minimum wage, said Meghan Hurley, communications coordinator with CATA (El Comite de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolas), the south Jersey-based The Farmworker Support Committee.

Their pay varies, she said. Some farmworkers who have worked on a farm for a decade have never made more than the minimum wage. Some farm owners pay more. But she’s sure she’s never come in contact with a farm worker making $15 an hour.

“They’re doing all the planting, the watering, the picking, the maintaining,” she said. “Rain or shine. Cold or hot. Long hours. Every day of the week during the season, they’re working pretty much nonstop.”

“The idea that we can just say, from a value perspective or a moral perspective, that some work is worth a higher minimum wage than other work, I mean, who’s qualified to judge that? Who’s qualified to say we should value farmwork less than other industries?” she said.

She adds that arguments about exploding prices for consumers are unfounded.

The executive director of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, Peter Furey, declined to be interviewed but said in a statement that a $15 minimum wage for agricultural workers would have an “adverse effect.”

New Jersey farmers struggle against low commodity prices and uncontrollable weather conditions. They cannot afford increased costs from higher base wages and payroll taxes, he said.

“Farming is a small business and greatly constrained to absorb mandated cost increases,” he said.

Don't Edit

(Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg Photo)

WHAT ABOUT TIPPED WORKERS, LIKE SERVERS AND BARTENDERS?

Tipped workers in New Jersey (think bartenders and servers) are paid a minimum of $2.13 cents an hour by their employer, plus tips.

If the combination of tips and hourly wage doesn't add up to at least $8.60 an hour, the employer should make up the difference.

Workers’ advocates say this is a system rife with abuse and wage theft.

And if New Jersey increases the minimum wage to $15 an hour, tipped workers will be guaranteed at least that much in tips and wages.

Marilou Halvorsen, president of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association, said this isn’t too much of a concern in New Jersey, where she said the average pay for a tipped employee is $17 an hour.

“To increase the minimum wage is not really something we have grave concerns about,” so long as it is done responsibly, she said.

But New Jersey’s worker advocates aren’t just talking about a $15 minimum wage for tipped workers — they want to eliminate the tipped wage altogether for the 193,000 servers and bartenders who rely on gratuities.

Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, D-Passaic, said she would amend legislation she introduced earlier this year in order to phase out the tipped wage.

About 63 percent of tipped workers are women. In New Jersey, 42 percent are single parents, 12 percent fall below the poverty line, 11 percent are on food stamps and 13 percent are enrolled in Medicaid, Sumter said.

“This is an economic issue and we believe that we can do something about it,” she said at a news conference last month.

That means tipped workers would be paid at least $15 an hour plus tips, rather than in combination with tips.

But Halvorsen said that in practice, servers in other jurisdictions that have eliminated tipped wages have seen a reduction in their income. “If you eliminate the tipped wage, people don’t tip,” she said. “It’s actually less money for the servers.”

Advocates said it would be a mistake to raise the minimum wage and not address the tipped wage.

“Make a tip a tip again,” McKoy said. “A tip shouldn’t be, thank God I’ll be able to pay my light bill again.”

Brian Kulas, 41, has lived on tips for much of his adult life.

"I've worked at a lot of places. I've been a busser, a dishwasher, a prep cook, a host, a server," he said.

Instead of working at one of the many the restaurants no more than the length of a football field away from his home, he now drives 200 miles round trip from East Brunswick to Atlantic City.

There, he can earn $20 an hour working banquets. The restaurants and banquet halls outside his front door, he said, don't pay a livable wage.

"I started looking for jobs down there out of sheer desperation," he said. "When I had jobs that were solely based on a tipped wage, it was nearly impossible to budget because you were forever guessing. When you have a stable wage that can cover specific priority bills, you can at least count on that, and it's easier to sleep at night."

Before finding work in Atlantic City, he was a server in Cranbury earning an average of $5 an hour — including tips.

With a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage, Kulas said he "would definitely" pursue jobs closer to home.

"I don't think people should have to travel so far to get a livable wage," he said.

Don't Edit

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

A poll released in October found three quarters of New Jersey residents favor an increase in the minimum wage, but they’re not sold on $15 an hour.

Respondents said, on average, they think it should be set at $12.47 an hour. Democrats pegged the figure at $13.01 and Republicans suggested $11.09.

McKoy cautioned against reading too much into the poll as it didn’t take respondents’ temperatures on a gradual increase to $15, which he argued is more likely to elicit favorable responses.

The bill rejected by Christie would have raised the minimum wage gradually over five years — from $8.38 in 2016 to $10.10 in 2017 and then by more than $1.25 an hour until 2021, after which future increase would again be dictated by changes in the consumer price index. It did not exclude any workers.

The Senate and Assembly passed the bill along party lines. Both Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, who was not speaker at the time, voted for it. Sweeney was a sponsor.

“I think there’s unfortunately a lot of politics at play, a power struggle,” McKoy said. “If you’ve already voted for it, and you’ve already been on the record supporting it, it’s obviously not about policy anymore. It’s about something else.”

On Monday, Sweeney accused Murphy of "showboating" on the minimum wage, saying the governor should sit down and talk with him rather than holding news conferences.

Coughlin is drafting a bill now that will become the basis for negotiations. He told Politico New Jersey on Thursday that he would consider carving out certain categories of workers — he wouldn’t say which — provided they have some ramp up to $15 an hour.

He said he wants his house to vote on a minimum wage bill as soon as December. Maybe January. Sweeney said he’d like to be able to meet that timeline, too.

“The time to have raised the minimum wage was years ago,” Coughlin said in a Sunday op-ed. “Now, with a new governor in office, we have an opportunity to finally do the right thing … Let’s pass a minimum wage increase in the coming weeks that finally proves that we mean what we say about helping those who need it most.”

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

NJ Advance Media reporter Karen Yi contributed to this report.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.