Hundreds of thousands of signatures were submitted Tuesday to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office for a minimum wage ballot measure seeking to land itself in front of Michigan voters in 2024.
Organizers behind the Raise the Wage MI ballot initiative reportedly delivered more than 610,000 signatures on Tuesday, July 26, to Michigan officials in an effort to qualify the proposal for the 2024 ballot. Organizers did not submit signatures in time to be considered for the November 2022 ballot.
One Fair Wage, a national advocacy group leading the initiative, is seeking to raise Michigan’s hourly minimum wage to $15 over the course of five years by amending the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act that was adopted, in part, in 2018. The proposal then seeks to increase the state’s minimum wage annually based on the rate of inflation -- a process that is called “indexing.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, minimum wage is indexed in 18 states and in Washington, D.C., meaning it is “automatically adjusted each year for increases in prices.” Economic analyst David Cooper says that by indexing minimum wage, the hourly salary never loses its value -- and it’s written into law that the wage will rise by a certain amount depending on a specific formula, so politicians are not deciding the number.
Learn more: Minimum wage: How we got here and why it’s not working
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