Minimum wage discussion takes to Michigan Supreme Court
(CBS DETROIT) - The Michigan Supreme Court is taking up the minimum wage fight. The court will hear arguments at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday involving a 2018 ballot initiative.
The initiative was expected to raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2022, and gradually increase wages for tipped workers, who make $3.84 hourly, to bring them up to the regular minimum wage.
Lawmakers originally backed the initiative, then changed it.
In late 2018, Republican lawmakers used an unprecedented strategy, essentially passing the initiatives themselves, without asking voters to weigh in.
An attorney arguing the case before the court, Mark Brewer, says that the "adopt and amend" strategy the Republicans used is dangerous.
"An important principle in this case is that the court cannot do this either to these ballot proposals or any ballot proposal in the future. If the Legislature gets away with this, it'll essentially mean the end of direct democracy of ballot initiatives in this state, and that would be a terrible tragedy," Brewer told CBS News Detroit.
"If you ask me, my first thing, if you're going to give me more money, I'm not going to complain about it," says Joseph Yarbrough, a server and bartender at a local restaurant chain in Novi.
Yarbrough says although a paycheck would be nice, he's plenty cautious of the impacts it could have on not only his job, but the coworkers around him.
"If we do start paying servers two to three times more, I think we'll end up with two to three times servers less in the building," he says.
While Yarbrough expressed that he is rather indifferent about what this increase could mean to him personally, Anthony Sacco, who owns Mootz Pizzeria in Downtown Detroit, says the trickle-down effects of an increase could be bad news all around.
"If the restaurant has to pay the servers more, the price of the food will go up. Customers will tend to want to pay the servers less in the way of a tip, [it] takes incentive away for the server to want to do a good job, and as it is now, they're making more money than anybody in the house anyway," Sacco told CBS News Detroit.
Sacco says his servers right now are taking away $20 to $30 an hour with the current salary and tipping system in place.
Yarbrough said he was doing about the same at $20 to $25.
Sacco says he's fortunate for his location downtown, adding this could be something that would hurt restaurants in all locations, in both cities and rural areas.
"The margins, like I said, are thin enough as it is, so raising your prices, one way or another, somebody is going to pay for it," he says.
While the oral arguments will be made on Dec. 7, and a ruling isn't expected until 2024.