Michigan restaurant owners, workers and activists gathered on Monday to launch a petition gathering effort for a November 2022 state ballot measure to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“Workers are no longer willing to work for sub-minimum wages, and hundreds of employers have raised wages to recruit staff,” said Chantel Watkins, One Fair Wage Michigan lead organizer, during a Monday press conference in Detroit. “Workers need a living wage and employers need it. too, to get workers back in restaurants.”

Nadia Nijimbere, owner of Baobab Fare restaurant in Midtown Detroit, agrees with the One Fair Wage effort. The East African cuisine eatery hosted the press conference.

“We do what we can,” said Mamba about paying the highest wages possible to employees. “As a business owner, I care about how we treat our employees.”

Following legislation enacted in 2014, Michigan’s minimum wage increased earlier this month by 22 cents to $9.87 an hour. For tipped employees, the hourly wage increased to $3.75, an increase of 8 cents per hour. For hourly workers 16 to 17 years old, the rate increased by 19 cents to $8.39 per hour.

Watkins said that her organization’s goal is to collect 500,000 signatures. State law requires that 340,047 valid signatures be collected.

The effort comes after a 2018 statewide measure that would have hiked the hourly wage would have risen to $12 by 2022, and included an increase based on inflation rates after 2022. The separate tipped wage would have been...

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