Maine Republicans attempt to roll back wages for younger workers

Arguing that younger workers in Maine do not deserve to make closer to a living wage, Republican legislators on Monday tried yet again to roll back the state’s voter-approved minimum wage law.

Assistant Senate Republican Leader Jeff Timberlake of Androscoggin introduced legislation to create a sub-minimum wage for youth workers under the age of 18. Under Timberlake’s proposal, youth workers would earn 75 percent of the minimum wage.

“I’m nothing but a big teddy bear when it comes to kids,” said Timberlake, who said he frequently hires teenagers to work at Ricker Hill Orchards, which he owns. “Anybody who has been around a lot of teenage kids knows that it takes a lot of adult supervision sometimes to keep them in line. They are very expensive.”

Timberlake’s proposal, LD 808, was among a suite of bills introduced by Republicans this legislative session, despite the failure of similar efforts in previous years. In addition to proposing a sub-minimum wage, other bills would create an alternative minimum wage for small business employees and rural workers.

During Monday’s hearing before the legislature’s Labor and Housing Committee, proponents of Maine’s minimum wage law pointed to economic data showing how the state has fared overall since the 2016 ballot initiative and slammed the Republicans for attempting to create a “two-tiered system” that would divide the state’s workers.

“Cutting the minimum wage for these young people would have serious impacts on their families’ wellbeing,” said James Myall, a policy analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy. According to MECEP’s assessment of state labor numbers, one in five working Mainers under the age of 18 lives at or near the poverty line. Further, young people growing up in poverty are often critical sources of income in their families, on average contributing up to 12.7 percent of their household income, according to one study.

Paula Voelker of Maine Education Association also spoke against the proposed youth wage.

“Children living in poverty are more likely to not graduate, and the long-term consequences include more inconsistent employment, reduced future earning potential and greater likelihood to remain in poverty,” she said.

The sentiment that youth workers deserve a lower wage as they are less productive than their adult counterparts was a common refrain among the Republicans, industry groups, and corporate lobbyists who testified in favor of the wage rollback proposals on Monday.

Former Republican representative and seafood distributor Eastern Traders co-owner Paula Sutton told a story of one young worker who she said she spent an extensive amount of time training. “Sometimes I felt more like a babysitter than I did an employer,” she said.

Sutton, who represented House District 95, lost her seat last November after distributing election materials intended to fan fears of Muslim immigrants.

Another former Republican representative, Kimberly Davis, who owns Scrummy Afters Candy Shoppe in Hallowell, said, “I’m opposed to any kind of mandated wages.”

Opponents of the minimum wage law have repeatedly claimed that higher wages would be detrimental to the state’s lowest-paid workers, as employers would be forced to cut jobs and roll back hours. Publicly available data now shows, however, that in the state’s bar and restaurant industry, the sector about which some of the most dire predictions were made, the opposite is happening.

“If Maine’s minimum wage were the driving factor pushing Maine’s businesses into the red, the data would show it,” said Myall. “All the evidence points to the same conclusion — there have been no widespread negative impacts.”

MECEP found that the increased wage has coincided with growth in jobs and wages in the state, and a sharp drop in the number of Maine children living in poverty — including in 2017 a 10-percent increase in household income observed among the bottom 25 percent of Maine workers, and 10,000 Maine children being lifted out of poverty.

Similar wage rollback bills have been defeated in recent years and the current crop are not likely to go far in the Democratically-controlled legislature.

This year, Maine’s lowest-paid workers also have the backing of Governor Janet Mills’ Department of Labor. During the hearing, Mike Roland, director of the department’s Bureau of Labor Standards, refuted Republicans’ claim that the minimum wage is a training wage meant for young people entering the workforce.

“All workers should receive a fair wage. We believe the minimum wage is intended to be just that — a floor, a level below which no wage should go,” Roland said.

“The department contends that these proposals are by their nature discriminatory and could encourage employers to hire workers under 18 in preference to older workers,” he said about the proposed youth wage. “It is not in the public interest to create a dynamic that pits younger workers against older workers in the labor market.”

Labor advocates opposed all the proposals to create tiers in the state’s minimum wage, including a proposal by Democratic state Rep. Benjamin Collins of Portland that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for businesses operating in Maine with over 50 employees.

“The two-tiered system is a way to divide workers,” said Adam Goode of the Maine AFL-CIO, who stressed that good policy would seek to raise the salary floor for all workers.

(Photo: Former legislator and business owner Paula Sutton testifying in favor of rolling back parts of Maine’s minimum wage law. | Dan Neumann)