Michigan restaurant workers, restaurants owners and advocates for fair wages and raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for all workers, including tipped workers, launched a new committee to support the initiative.
The Raise the Wage Michigan Ballot Committee was announced on Tuesday at Yum Village on Woodward in Detroit's New Center area.
In announcing the committee, Chantel Watkins, the lead organizer for One Fair Wage Michigan, said Michiganders could have seen an increase to $12 an hour on Jan. 1, which also would have included tipped workers receiving tips on top of that base wage, had a ballot initiative passed after a successful campaign gathered enough signatures to be put before voters in 2018.
“In response, the Republicans who control the state legislature took the One Fair Wage ballot measure off the ballot and made it law, raising wages for all workers to $12 an hour plus tips," Watkins said in a copy of the speech provided to the Free Press in advance. "But in doing so, they openly declared that they were doing it to keep workers from voting — they were worried about women and people of color voting for Democrats in November 2018. They publicly declared that they promised to gut the bill after the election."
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