Arguments heard on minimum wage bid
Supporters and opponents of an initiative petition to raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 locked horns in front of the nine-member Oklahoma Supreme Court this week during an en banc hearing at the state Capitol.
The petition, sponsored by the group Raise the Wage Oklahoma, was challenged by the Oklahoma Farm Bureau and the State Chamber of Oklahoma. Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing was the second en banc — French for “on the bench” — hearing held by the state’s high court within the past six months.
The proposal would amend the state’s Minimum Wage Act statute and sever the state’s tie to the federal minimum wage. If approved, the state question would double Oklahoma’s statemandated minimum wage over the next few years. Then, beginning in 2030, the minimum wage would track the cost of living, as measured by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.
Chad Warmington, CEO of the chamber, said the petition was unconstitutional. “I think the Court today got a really clear explanation from our team about what our problems with the state question are,” he said. “We think it’s blatantly unconstitutional. You can’t delegate the authority to raise the minimum wage away to an unelected and unaccountable federal agency.”
Supporters of the petition called the challenge a politically motivated attempt by wealthy corporate interests to block a pay raise for Oklahoma families. The increase is necessary, they said, because the minimum wage has not been increased in nearly 15 years and has not kept up with inflation.
“We made the case very clear with the court today. The politically motivated challenge brought by wealthy corporate interests is nothing more than a blatant attempt to block voters from having their say at the ballot box on a gradual increase to the state’s minimum wage,” Raise the Wage spokesperson Amber England said in a media statement.
England said the state chamber’s claim that tying wage increases to the Consumer Price Index was unconstitutional “reeks of self-serving politics, seeing as dozens of Oklahoma laws already do this exact thing, including legislation they’ve championed and fully support.”
“They sure didn’t have a problem using this exact inflation index when it served their own interest of providing hundreds of millions in tax giveaways to wealthy corporations, but when it provides a pay raise for hundreds of thousands of struggling Oklahoma workers and their families, they cry foul.”