A campaign to increase Michigan’s minimum wage expects to file its petition language later today with state elections officials. As Michigan Public Radio’s Rick Pluta reports, the campaign wants to boost the state minimum wage to nine-50 an hour.
The rate would go up gradually, starting with an increase to seven dollars and 90 cents an hour next January. The minimum wage would to nine-50 in 2016 and then be indexed to inflation.
Frank Houston is with the minimum wage campaign. He says that rate would allow a breadwinner to lift a family of three above the poverty line.
“Our goal is to get people out of poverty who are working hard, playing by the rules, and don’t get a fair wage for it.”
Houston appeared over the weekend on the Michigan Public Television show “Off the Record,” available below.
The petition drive has to collect 258 ,000 signatures to put the question before the Legislature. If it’s not approved by state lawmakers, it would go on the November ballot for voters to decide.