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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti makes an announcement at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in South Los Angeles Sept. 1. Garcetti proposed to raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles from the current $9 per hour to $13.25 in 2017.

(AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

By Justin Norton-Kertson

So you are against raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour? Many workers, both young and old, did not take the risk of going to college — and the huge associated debt risk — only to wind up with a minimum-wage job. But the "low wage economy" is becoming the new normal — a reality from which Lee Spector, in his Oct. 12 "In My Opinion" piece, "Here's how a $15 minimum wage would affect a restaurant," seems wildly disconnected.

Spector writes, "I treat my employees fairly ... I start most of my new hires at minimum wage." I respectfully disagree that $9.10 per hour is a fair wage, and I am positive his employees would feel the same. I encourage Spector to poll his employees to see if they believe their labor to be worth $15 per hour.

Spector laments the loss of "incentive" if all his employees made $15 per hour. As someone who has worked more than his fair share of low-wage jobs, including a recent stint as a minimum wage fast-food worker, I can assure him that the micro merit raises he gives his low-wage workers do not serve as any real incentive. And there is no worse motivation than the realization that you will never make more than $13 per hour, the wage at which Spector says his workers top out. I can also assure him that having the dignity associated with making a real living wage is profoundly more motivating than perks like the free Blazers and Timbers tickets Spector occasionally gives his workers.

I'm curious about the age range of Spector's employees and if they have families to support, since 88 percent of workers who make minimum wage and who would benefit from even a modest increase are over the age of 20; more than one-third are at least age 40. Perhaps it never crosses his mind that a minimum wage worker with kids in Oregon has to work an average of 72 hours per week in order to afford rent for a two-bedroom apartment.

It is great that Spector gives his employees a free meal when they work a shift, but it seems he chooses not to concern himself with how his workers can afford to eat the rest of the time on a wage of only $9.10 per hour. Most likely, Oregon taxpayers subsidize Spector's business via food stamps for his workers, since he does not pay them enough to live on.

Spector boasts that he pays for health insurance for his full-time employees, but if his business is representative of others across the state, most of his workers are part-time employees who receive taxpayer-subsidized health care.

Spector wants Oregonians to believe the sky will fall and his business will fail if workers have a $15 minimum wage. However, it should be pointed out that Nick Hanauer, who is one of the most successful entrepreneurs, investors and managers in the Northwest, argues that a $15 minimum wage will provide a massive boost of more than $400 billion to America's struggling and stagnant economy. In this way, a $15 minimum wage will actually be good for businesses and business owners like Lee Spector because tens of thousands of workers in the Portland area will have the extra money to spend on eating at restaurants and otherwise patronizing local businesses.

Indeed, Americans are waking up to the fact that poverty wages are not only bad for workers, but bad for the broader economy as well. SeaTac, Wash., has lived with a $15 minimum wage since Jan. 1, while Seattle begins implementing its phased-in $15 minimum wage in 2015. School employees and hotel workers in Los Angeles have won a $15 minimum wage, and San Francisco is expected to pass a citywide $15 referendum this November.

While we certainly do not want to underplay the concern for small businesses, at the same time we should not sympathize with Spector's op-ed, in which he condescendingly insults and chastises real workers who are fighting for the dignity and economic security of a living wage. We should sympathize with his employees and the hundreds of thousands of other low-wage workers in Oregon who deserve a real raise. Oregon shouldn't settle for less than $15.

Justin Norton-Kertson of Southwest Portland is founder of 15 Now! PDX.