Washington Wages In Dispute

Washington Wages In Dispute. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Employees in Washington love to hear that their hourly minimum wage is going up. It means more money in their pocket. But the person who has to pay that wage may just be reaching a critical mass when it comes to being able to continue paying higher and higher wages. Eventually, something has got to give. Scott Dilley, Washington State Farm Bureau's Public Policy Analyst says they are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the state department of Labor and Industries regarding the proposed 12 cent wage increase. DILLEY: The way that we are looking at this wage is for several years the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, the cost of living was going up. During the recession it went down and it has gone back up again within the past 12 months but it has not gone above where it was before so what the attorney general's office is saying is the minimum wage needs to stay the same until the CPI goes above that mark. Of course it would solve most labor issues since producers could not afford to hire workers. DILLEY: Yes, exactly. It's going to severely hurt labor intensive agriculture. We already have the highest minimum wage in the nation, this is just going to add insult to injury and you add on top of that an average 12% rate increase for workers comp and another rate increase on UI taxes next year and we've got three things, minimum wage, workers comp and UI that are going to hit agriculture hard. We will be watching this issue. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.