State divided over minimum wage hike
By: Kenny 

For the first time in nine years, the Michigan State Legislature voted to increase the minimum wage across the state. The bill, passed in March, will increase the current $5.15 bottom limit to $6.95 this October, $7.15 this coming July, and $7.40 by July 2008, affecting an estimated 740,000 workers. Naturally, workers earning minimum wage will benefit from the more than two dollar an hour raise their employers will be required to give them, especially those at or near the poverty level, certainly a group this bill is intended to assist. Teenagers and unskilled workers making just a dollar or two above minimum wage will naturally also benefit. The impact on the employers, however, must also be considered  that extra $2.25 an hour has to come from somewhere, after all. Businesses that hire workers part time at a low wage  summer jobs for high school and college students, for instance  will now have to shell out a considerable increase in pay to temporary and usually unskilled workers. Its hard hiring fourteen year-olds and other workers with no experience or prior employers as it is, says Joe Bartnick, who manages a small restaurant in Traverse City, and when you only have so much money coming in, the more you have to pay, the fewer workers you can actually hire. Already plagued with a shortage of jobs, Michigan is in a precarious position as far as wages go  with people working day and night for almost nothing on the one end, and businesses (smaller ones especially) with limited budgets who may be unable to hire anyone new at all in the face of higher wages. The Compass has had to adjust its budget to prepare for the increases as well, and area businesses will have to do the same before long. Overall, LSSU is going to have to pay about $350,000 a year extra in salaries of student workers.  It is hardly a new conflict  such has been the nature of economics since its inception. Predictions can go both ways, but only time will tell what effect the new laws will have on Michigans economy. We will certainly know before long.
