With initiative petitions due today, the head of Arizona's restaurant industry already is gearing up to convince voters to quash an initiative that would boost the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.
The current state minimum wage is $8.05 an hour. In 2006, by a 2 to 1 margin, voters approved to raise minimum wage from the federal $7.25 rate, complete with annual inflation increases. Now supporters say that's not enough. They claim they have petitions with more than 250,000 signatures — 100,000 more than they need to put the possibility of a $12 wage on the November ballot.
But Steve Chucri of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association said he thinks this measure can be beaten.
"The public will say that enough's enough. And I think when they talk about a $12 or $12.50 wage the polling indicates to us that people believe that it's too much ... that [it's] too high of a wage for a place like Arizona," he said.
At $8.05 an hour, Arizonans can expect to make $16,744 a year working minimum wage. For a single person, the federal government considers anything below $11,880 a year to be living in poverty. That figure is $16,020 for a family of two and $20,160 for a family of three.