After two years of working at The Den, 74 University Ave., UW-Madison senior Matthew Sobocinski has earned his way up to $7.50 an hour for his job as assistant manager.
Sobocinski's job requires him to lock up the store in the evenings and weekends, prepare the till for the next day's deposit, do a little supervising of other employees and order stock.
His wage is, by some standards, not bad. He said all employees at The Den start at $5.25 an hour. But under a proposed referendum, Sobocinski would not even make minimum wage.
Ald. Austin King, District 8, former alder Tom Powell and activist Joe Lindstrom are kicking off a ballot initiative at a 10 a.m. press conference today that would raise the minimum wage in Madison to $7.75 an hour, according to a Wisconsin State Journal report Sunday. The current minimum wage in Wisconsin is $5.15 an hour.
King declined to comment on the proposal until today, but according to the State Journal the initiative needs the support of 12,800 signatures to make it on the Feb. 17 election ballot.
Low-wage workers and small business owners near campus had mixed reactions to the idea of raising the minimum wage.
\Especially for some businesses on State Street it's going to hurt the businesses a lot because it's just going to be such a larger business expense,"" Sobocinski said of the proposal. ""But as a worker I can't argue with it either because I scraped by for a while on barely minimum wage.""
The proposal would present difficult trade-offs for small employers like herself, according to Sandy Torkildson, president of the Greater State Street Business Association and owner of A Room of One's Own, 307 W. Johnson St.
For example, Torkildson said she has always provided complete health insurance benefits for all her full-time employees, which costs her about $1.75 an hour per person. She could not afford to do so if she had to pay all her part-time employees $7.75 an hour.
""I would have to choose, between giving my full-time employees who need health insurance, a choice between that or giving a lot of students that I hire part-time that work 15 hours a week a higher rate,"" Torkildson said.
""That's the reality that it will come down to for me, because I have very few choices in my income statement that I have any influence over-my rent, my electricity and my increase in taxes are all dictated to me by the agencies that charge them,"" she said.
Proponents of the increase argue the $5.15 minimum wage cannot meet workers' basic needs, but opponents argue business owners would have to fire some employees as the cost per employee rises.
""If you can have two people working at $6 an hour or else one at [$7.75] an hour, I prefer the two at $6 because it gives the opportunity for more people [to have jobs],"" a University Square Theatre, 62 University Square, employee who asked to remain anonymous.
