Minimum Wage Increase Hurts Workers

BY JUDE REID, GRADE 12

I wish that the minimum wage increase was put in place with more restrictions regarding companies cutting their employees’ hours to balance the effect of the wage increase on their bottom line.

Although the minimum wage increase was something that I feel was necessary, the resulting backlash from many large companies has caused the increase to be almost irrelevant.

Many large companies that employ workers who make minimum wage have been cutting their hours and benefits to compensate for the wage hike. This is leading to many employees making less now than they were before the increase to $14 per hour.

As a part-time employee at a large fast-food company, I was averaging 35-40 hours or $410-$470 a week in gross pay at $11.70 an hour. My current weekly schedule has been reduced to 20-25 hours or $280-$350 in gross pay and, unfortunately, it is still dropping. This means that my monthly pay has decreased from as much as $1,900 to $1,100.

To put this in perspective, a one-bedroom apartment is approximately $900 per month plus utilities. That doesn’t leave much left over to eat, not to mention having some fun in life.

This money that we are losing is money that we cannot afford to lose. The wage increase was beneficial for minimum wage workers like myself, but if I knew that my income would have been cut so severely, I would have preferred that things just stayed the same.