EVERETT — Everett workers may be due for a raise.
At least, those making minimum wage.
A proposed Everett ballot measure could raise the city’s minimum wage for workers at large businesses to $20.24 — a 24% increase over the $16.28 statewide rate.
Seattle’s minimum wage is $19.97 an hour. In unincorporated King County, it’s set to rise to $20.29 next year.
Everett’s proposal is a joint effort between members of both the county Labor Council and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and “citizens,” wrote Mike Berryhill, a member of the labor council and Democratic Socialists, in an email. They formed a political action committee called Everett Deserves a Raise to push the initiative forward.
The goal is to get the initiative on the ballot via petition.
A potential increase in Everett would go into effect July 1, 2025, if voters approve it in November, according to a draft of the measure. The rate would increase each year with inflation.
If the proposal’s leaders fail to get the required number of signatures in time, some City Council members are pushing forward a separate ordinance. On Wednesday, City Council member Mary Fosse moved to draft a measure with the city attorney, mentioning a recent wage hike in Renton. Council member Don Schwab seconded the motion.
If the council approves the ordinance, Everett residents will get the deciding vote.
The City Council route is a “backup plan,” Berryhill said in an interview.
The minimum would not apply to businesses with fewer than 15 employees that make $2 million or less in annual gross revenue.
Midsized businesses with fewer than 500 employees, wherever those employees work, would only have to pay a minimum of $18.24 an hour starting in July 2025, and $1 less than the minimum wage for large employers the year after that. They would have until July 2027 to start paying employees the same minimum wage as large employers.
Mayor Cassie Franklin could not be reached for comment Thursday.
“What I hear right now, from the vast majority of my constituents, is that a lot of people are struggling,” Fosse said in an interview, noting wages have not kept pace with an increased cost of living.
The draft initiative is based on Renton’s ordinance voters passed early this year, raising the minimum wage there to $20.29.
Berryhill said Everett campaigners made their proposed wage 5 cents less than Renton’s to make it “more reasonable to a potentially more conservative city council.”
The group expects opposition from business owners and pro-business politicians, Berryhill said, though he stressed the ordinance makes an exception for small business owners.
Tom Harrison, former owner of MyMyToyStore in downtown Everett, said a minimum wage increase is “necessary.”
Harrison now runs a company called Planet Mynd Play Lab, offering a range of programming for kids and adults.
He has no employees, he said. When he ran the toy store, he had a total of three employees at different times, for roughly three months total, he said.
“Wage increases will be painful for businesses such as retail and for the restaurant industry,” he said, but “businesses really need to diversify so that they can increase their profit margins.”
He added: “It’s not about politics. It is about: Wages need to rise. So if you are a business that is going to struggle with a wage increase, you need to adapt your business.”
The mimimum wage campaign pointed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, which puts Snohomish County’s living wage at $29.59 for a single adult with no kids. The same single adult in King County would need $30.08 an hour to make a living wage.
The average apartment rent in Snohomish County is $1,847, according to a report from the Washington Center for Real Estate Research from the end of last year.
The campaign argued the wage increase wouldn’t harm small businesses, citing research from the University of California Berkeley indicating minimum wage increases don’t lead to job losses.
The campaign’s news release also mentioned a 2014 article from the Brookings Institute, which contended “an increase in the minimum wage tends to have a ‘ripple effect’ on other workers earning wages near that threshold.”
“Working people haven’t made a living wage in such a long time,” Berryhill said.
He added: “You could probably almost argue, ever.”
Sophia Gates: 425-339-3035; sophia.gates@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @SophiaSGates.
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