The Metropolitan King County Council is anticipated to vote Tuesday to extend the minimal wage in unincorporated King County by 25%, bringing it to $20.29 per hour after which rising once more annually with inflation. As workers of an area restaurant whose paychecks this proposal is supposed to guard, our message to the council is evident: First, please do no hurt. Together with well being care and suggestions as a part of a complete minimal compensation bundle will defend our paychecks by defending our jobs.
You could be questioning why we don’t simply preserve our mouths shut and take the 25% elevate. In spite of everything, who wouldn’t need additional money? However a councilmember’s vote doesn’t make that additional money materialize out of nowhere. Our time working at Cascadia Pizza has allowed us to see what it will take for our employer to soak up this 25% enhance in labor prices (by far the biggest expense of most eating places).
Our employers are three pals who began with a dream 5 years in the past after they had been of their mid-20s. In the present day they function a pizza chain with 4 areas in Washington and two franchise areas in Idaho, using over 100 folks. Like most eating places nonetheless round at present, Cascadia Pizza took on main debt by the pandemic — solely to then be hit with double-digit price will increase in labor, hire, vitality and provides throughout the restoration. The homeowners have managed the enterprise nicely and have weathered the continued storm, nevertheless it hasn’t been straightforward in an trade that already runs on a mean revenue margin of simply 4%.
To keep up this slim margin, the typical restaurant must generate $25,000 in extra income for each $1,000 in new prices. Since no eating places wherever will see this sort of dramatic enhance in enterprise, affected companies should regulate in different methods.
We already know what these changes will appear to be at Cascadia’s Maple Valley location in unincorporated King County: considerably diminished hours of operation and elevated menu costs. Decreased hours not solely imply diminished wages however diminished suggestions as nicely, which — though not formally acknowledged as wages — assist pay our payments. Whereas our base hourly wage would rise if the proposed enhance passes, our efficient incomes would really lower, as we’d be working fewer hours and receiving fewer suggestions from prospects who can not abdomen drastic value will increase. In California, the place a $20-per-hour minimal wage for quick-serve eating places went into impact final month, menu costs have already elevated 8%. After all, all of that is assuming the restaurant even manages to remain open.
We’ve turn into acquainted sufficient with the enterprise at Cascadia Pizza to wish to sometime open a Cascadia franchise location of our personal. If a wage enhance is remitted by the council, we all know that it merely won’t be sustainable for present eating places — not to mention for the eating places we wish to open — if it prices extra to make the pizza than we are able to promote it for.
Proponents of the proposal level to Seattle for instance. However when Seattle handed its $15-an-hour minimal wage in 2013, it gave small companies a seven-year phase-in interval to fulfill the purpose and did so by factoring in whole compensation. In distinction, the County Council proposes only a two-year phase-in for many companies and doesn’t consider suggestions and advantages.
Permitting small employers to fulfill the $20.29 minimal by a complete compensation bundle that may embody well being care advantages and recommendations on prime of the baseline state minimal wage is an affordable place that offers small companies the flexibleness they should elevate wages for his or her workers pretty and sustainably. With out this whole compensation recognition, our livelihoods shall be in jeopardy.
