Correction: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has taken a neutral position on recent proposals to raise the minimum wage. Wal-Mart’s stance was misstated in this article.
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor officially threw his support behind a ballot initiative that would raise Arkansas’ minimum wage to $8.50 over three years.
Pryor, D-Ark., spoke at an event Saturday at Bullock Temple CME Church across from Little Rock’s historic Central High School, before signing a petition to allow the measure to be on the November ballot. The initiative, the wording of which has been approved by the attorney general’s office, is being sponsored by the group Give Arkansas a Raise Now.
Stephen Copley, the chairman of Give Arkansas a Raise Now, said Pryor is the first candidate for statewide office to endorse the measure. As Copley spoke at the church Saturday, Pryor and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker stood in the background.
“I want to thank Sen. Pryor for a long history of supporting working-class and middle-class families, and I want to thank him in advance for being the first statewide official to come out in support of the minimum-wage ballot initiative,” Copley said. “People are working hard, playing by the rules. They share the American dream, and, quite frankly, they just can’t make ends meet.”
The group needs 62,507 signatures from registered voters around the state before the measure can appear on the ballot. The initiative would gradually raise the minimum wage in Arkansas over three years from $6.25 per hour to $7.50 per hour on Jan. 1, 2015, $8 on Jan. 1, 2016, and finally $8.50 on Jan. 1, 2017. Copley said the jump would mean a $4,600 increase in annual income for minimum-wage workers in Arkansas.
Arkansas is one of four states that have a minimum wage lower than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Companies that make less than $500,000 a year in revenue and don’t engage in interstate commerce can use the lower state minimum wage as the standard pay for workers, according to the Arkansas Department of Labor.
Pryor informally supported the measure in interviews as far back as December, but gave his endorsement to the measure Saturday.
“It’s been more than seven years since we have increased the minimum wage and of course during that time we have been through one of the harshest economic downturns I’ve seen in my lifetime and the country has seen since the Great Depression. And the cost of living has continued to increase in that time,” he said. “You can talk about the economics, you can talk about all sorts of different things, but the bottom line is it’s just the right thing to do.”
Pryor said Saturday, however, that he does not support a federal effort spearheaded by President Barack Obama to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. He said the Arkansas approach was better designed.
“I like the Arkansas approach better; it’s phased in over three years instead of two [years] on the federal level,” he said. “I think, too, the Arkansas effort is a bottom-up effort, a grass-roots effort. You’ll have to have a signature petition drive. You’re going to have to have a vote of the people and if they vote it in, they vote it in. All indications are that they will.”
The senator is running a heated re-election campaign against a Republican challenger, first-term U.S. Rep.Tom Cotton from Arkansas’ 4th Congressional District. The targeted Democrat has been criticized by some pundits for not supporting the federal increase, which is opposed by several of the state’s top employers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is one of the largest employers nationwide.
In an emailed statement Saturday, Cotton’s spokesman, David Ray, said the federal wage increase is an issue the opponents agree on.
“A ten-dollar minimum wage imposed by Washington is bad for Arkansas workers and businesses - it would hurt the very people we’re trying to help,” Ray wrote. “Tom believes this issue is best left to the states and it’s a good idea to let Arkansas voters decide the matter. Tom will carefully study this proposal with an open mind and an eye toward making the best policy for Arkansas’s working families.”
Cotton was in Arkansas on Saturday to speak at the groundbreaking for the Northwest Arkansas Republican Party headquarters in Springdale. He also was to speak Saturday night at the Lonoke County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 02/23/2014