Portland businesses organize to fight $15 minimum wage

[jpak]

Source: Bangor Daily News

PORTLAND, Maine — A nonpartisan group of business owners has started raising money to defeat a local referendum that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2019.

Chris Hall, CEO of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the group mobilized partly in response to polling in late August showing popular support for Question 1.

“And most [referenda] stay ahead unless they are opposed,” Hall said after a news conference Wednesday morning outside of Becky’s Diner on Commercial Street.

The poll, by the Maine People’s Resource Center, showed 48.2 percent of likely voters supported the $15 minimum, which would take effect in 2017 for large employers and 2019 for small employers. About 39.7 percent were opposed with a possibly decisive 12.1 percent of voters undecided.

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Read more: http://bangordailynews.com/2015/10/07/business/portland-businesses-organize-to-fight-15-minimum-wage/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. 'nonpartisan' - ie, it's not about parties, it's about money and wealth.

They've got it, and they want to keep it.

[Gormy Cuss]

2. I'll be happy to avoid all of these businesses when I'm visiting.

Becky Rand has four years to work up to that increase. Shameful. Becky's diner and DiMillo's cater to the tourist trade and those folks will pay up. As for people going to South Portland instead, just watch the wage law get replicated in the adjacent cities and towns in Greater Portland, else they'll lose their best employees to Ptld businesses.

[lark]

3. A list should be published so people can boycott those companies.

Their greed and lack of concern for their workers should be rewarded by giving folks a chance to express their opinion by walking away and frequenting other, more progressive less hateful companies.

[rockfordfile]

4. They are clearly a right wing group

"A nonpartisan group" lol yeah sure. A typical right group that doesn't want to pay American workers a good wage in the 21st Century.

Why do republicans/right wingers hate American workers?

[uawchild]

5. Non-living wages = corporate welfare

When we subsidize businesses that do not pay living wages by aiding their underpaid workers with needed social programs, we are just putting money into the owner's pockets. These owners then claim "they built it" all on their own. Sigh.

Wouldn't it be more transparent to insist all companies pay a living wage and then subsidize those businesses that need help? It would certainly be more honest and demonstrate what is really going on.

[McKim]

6. How Many Have Joined The People's Boycott List So Far?

I wonder how many will join up and thus be on a boycott list for the buying public. What goes around comes around.

[NonMetro]

7. The Chamber Of Commerce Is Not "Non-Partisan"

It's a wing of the Republican Party.

[TeamPooka]

8. "The people are for it so we must defeat it" says group of business leaders. nt