{"id":73395,"date":"2016-07-26T02:41:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T08:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/signatures-submitted-to-raise-minimum-wage-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2016-07-26T08:41:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T08:41:23","slug":"signatures-submitted-to-raise-minimum-wage-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/signatures-submitted-to-raise-minimum-wage-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Signatures submitted to raise minimum wage in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Patty
Patty Kupfer, campaign manager for Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, leads a group in delivering 200,000 signatures Monday to the Secretary of State\u2019s Office to place a ballot question before voters that would gradually raise the minimum wage. Opponents \u2013 led by business groups \u2013 fear that the effort would lead to job losses and higher consumer prices. But proponents say their research indicates that raising the wage would benefit the economy and workers.<\/span>Peter Marcus\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Proponents of an effort to gradually raise the minimum wage in Colorado submitted more than double the amount of signatures necessary to make the November ballot.<\/p>\n

Colorado Families for a Fair Wage submitted around 200,000 signatures to the Secretary of State\u2019s Office on Monday. It takes 98,492 valid signatures to make the ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had thousands of conversations with voters all across the state during this effort, and it\u2019s clear that Colorado voters overwhelmingly support raising the minimum wage,\u201d said Patty Kupfer, campaign manager for the initiative.<\/p>\n

The effort would gradually raise the minimum wage to $12 by 2020.<\/p>\n

Proponents took the question to voters after the Legislature failed to act.<\/p>\n

The proposal aims at addressing the current wage of $8.31, which hasn\u2019t kept pace with the state\u2019s increasing cost of living, according to proponents.<\/p>\n

A full-time minimum wage worker makes about $17,000 per year, or about $300 per week after taxes.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the effort point to research \u2013 conducted by the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research \u2013 that shows that raising the minimum wage has \u201clittle or no employment response.\u201d Raising the wage could actually boost job retention, as it would reduce employee turnover and increase productivity, according to the study.<\/p>\n

Proponents also say the proposal would not lead to consumer price increases.<\/p>\n

Opponents, however, point to dueling research, which underscores that raising the wage would reduce potential employment in Colorado by 3.3 percent, eliminating over 90,000 jobs, and decrease wage and salary incomes by as much as $3.9 billion per year.<\/p>\n

Common Sense Policy Roundtable conducted the research, which describes itself as a \u201cfree-enterprise think tank\u201d that is aligned with business interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to do more harm than good,\u201d said Tyler Sandberg, spokesman for Keep Colorado Working, the opposition campaign. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to raise the wage for low-wage workers, but they\u2019re going to end up having them laid off instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this may be affordable for wealthy corporations in Denver, it\u2019s not affordable for small businesses, and it\u2019s not affordable for rural Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

But some small business owners are already on board with the proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a choice today about what state we want Colorado to become,\u201d said Yoav Lurie, chief executive and founder of Simple Energy, a Boulder-based company that works on energy conservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a fantastic workforce,\u201d Lurie continued. \u201cNobody who works full time in Colorado should live in poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

pmarcus@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

200,000 signatures delivered to raise pay to $12 by 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[791,94,266,1605,13,2632,1634],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ballot-initiatives","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-election","tag-employee","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-labor-market","tag-wage-and-pension"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73395"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}