Tourist businesses lining the Parks Highway outside of the Denali National Park entrance, at a strip nicknamed “Glitter Gulch,” are seen on May 5, 2024. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
I have both worked for hourly wages and for many years operated restaurant businesses paying hourly wages. During college and around and about my service in the Army, including a tour in Vietnam, I worked as a roughneck on oil rigs throughout the West. After graduation in 1968 I roughnecked in California for the “high” wage of some $3.50/hour before the new oil discovery in Prudhoe Bay enticed me to move to Alaska. There I again found employment roughnecking on the North Slope for the even “higher” wages of about $4.50/hour until I decided to try my hand in business.
I started up Grizzly Burger on the corner where C Street terminated at a two-lane Northern Lights Boulevard. Thus began more than two decades of hands-on involvement with the restaurant business from personally hiring and working with kids on their first jobs to managing and working with experienced cooks and servers. I always felt indebted to my employees for the hard work they did to please the customers and make the business successful.
In 1969 the year the first Grizzly Burger opened and in 1975 when I started Downtown Deli, the minimum wage was $2.10/hour. Today, it is only $11.73. Adjusted for inflation, an hourly wage of $2.10 in 1969 would be worth more than $17 in 2024.
Unable to get legislative or administration support for increasing the minimum wage, citizens throughout Alaska have successfully gathered the support necessary to put an initiative on the ballot to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15/hour over the next three years and to implement a paid sick leave program.
This isn’t the first time the Alaska public has taken the lead on improving pay rates. In 2014, the last minimum wage citizen initiative passed was on the ballot because of the legislative and gubernatorial failure to act. The Alaska public responded with an overwhelming 69% positive vote. I believe voters will again overwhelmingly support Ballot Measure No. 1 based on the economic and social benefits it provides to the working families and businesses of Alaska.
Alaska’s current minimum wage of $11.73/hour is around the median of all states’ wage rates. There are 22 states that have higher minimum wages, including Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Florida, Oregon and Washington. But then let’s compare wages to the cost of living of all states. Here Alaska has the dubious distinction of ranking sixth overall among its peers. Looking more deeply into this statistic we find that Alaska ranks first in the cost of food and health care and third in terms of transportation costs.
So it is easy to see that the woeful combination of the high cost of living with median wage rates puts many Alaska families unable to make ends meet. And these economics are only exacerbated by the steady drum of inflation over the last many decades. It puts pressure on people to move away from the state and out of the job market to more favorable locales. An unstable work force, or shortage of workers, is not good for business.
This initiative also establishes paid sick leave for businesses which makes economic sense and ensures fair living standards. Under the initiative, employees earn access to paid sick leave at the rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked with a ceiling of 56 hours of paid sick leave — reduced to 40 hours for employers of under 15 workers. Currently, 18 states have already realized the benefits of paid sick leave and passed laws implementing this policy.
It is widely accepted that employees who go to work when they are sick but can’t afford to lose their wages are not only hurting their own health but also are risking the well-being of the rest of the workforce. This was brought home to us during the Covid-19 epidemic. Businesses are not well served if there is an outbreak of disease which contaminates both their employees and their customers. Additionally, the use of sick leave days should be extended to enable a parent to provide care for a sick child rather than sending the child to school or a day care center that would endanger other kids as well as teachers.
Ballot Measure No. 1 will make Alaska a better place to work and live. It will benefit workers and businesses. It will improve Alaska’s economy by attracting and keeping a pool of healthy, equitably-paid workers for our businesses.
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