Lynn Chamber debates minimum wage hike

LYNN – Proposals to boost the minimum wage must be weighed against cost pressures on small businesses, including unemployment insurance, a retail association president said Wednesday.Ideas aimed at counterbalancing a minimum wage hike’s impact on Massachusetts small businesses, like striking down Sunday time-and-a-half pay, are unpopular, acknowledged Retailers Association of Massachusetts’ Jon Hurst.But he said grocers and other retailers may not be able to afford coupling a minimum wage hike with additional Sunday pay.”If we go to an $11 an hour minimum wage, a teenager bagging groceries will earn $16.50 an hour. We need to abolish that law,” Hurst told Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce members.The state Senate last November voted to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2016 and a push is on to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10. The Massachusetts minimum wage rose to $8 in 2007.Insurance agent and chamber member Rick Wood said minimum wage hike proposals must be weighed against efforts by small employers to survive in a gradually recovering economy, including their ability to hire new employees.”The pressure on small businesses is tremendous,” Wood said.Hurst said 17 percent of Massachusetts’ workers are employed by retailers and said Massachusetts tip credit and teen wage rates are out of line with other states. An association statement claimed “the average tip credit level across the nation is 45 percent of the set minimum wage.” He said tip credit proposals under review push Massachusetts’ credit above the national average.John Olson, president of Columbia Insurance in Lynn, said setting a Massachusetts “teen training wage” below minimum wage make sense.”Do you want to spend $11 an hour to see what a teen can do?” he asked.Columbia employs eight workers who, Olson said, earn above minimum wage. He said most small businesses budget salaries against sales.”You can’t arbitrarily raise salaries if sales aren’t increasing: It’s got to come from somewhere else,” Olson said.Hurst said reforms in Massachusetts’ unemployment insurance laws are also overdue and said the state “has the easiest qualification standards of any state in the nation.” He said unemployment benefit officials in other states require workers to show they have been employed over a six-month period when they file for unemployment.”We need to close loopholes involving those receiving benefits with really no attachment to the workforce. It drives employers nuts,” he said.