ANN ARBOR, MI — Should Ann Arbor officials push for a citywide minimum wage of $15 an hour?
The question has come up this election season with the issue raised in a three-way City Council race in Ward 4.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, who seeks to unseat incumbent Elizabeth Nelson in the Aug. 2 Democratic primary and also faces fellow challenger Dharma Akmon, has repeatedly pressed the issue, making it a central part of her campaign while arguing city leaders aren’t doing enough about it.
While the city has a living wage ordinance requiring contractors who do business with the city to pay employees $14.82 per hour with health care or $16.52 without health care, and the city is now also extending that to lower-ranking city employees who historically haven’t been paid a living wage, Savabieasfahani is calling for a $15 minimum wage for all.
To the maximum extent allowed by law, the city needs to immediately apply its living wage ordinance to cover all workers in Ann Arbor and simultaneously needs to publicly push for at least a $15 minimum wage for every worker under local, state and federal law, she said last month.
But there’s still one thing in the way of the city doing much about it right now: Michigan law.
Under the state’s 2015 Local Government Labor Regulatory Limitation Act, a local governmental can’t require an employer to pay employees a wage higher than the state minimum wage, which is $9.87 an hour.
Nelson, who is seeking a second four-year term, said she would...
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