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A follow-up to the Seattle restaurants/minimum wage story

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A reader sends along a link to this Bethany Jean Clement piece in the Seattle Times.  Clement, in a refreshing act of journalism against her employer’s editorial interests, asks the restaurant owners about this, and all four openly repudiate the assertion that the coming minimum wage increase is a ‘factor’ in their decision. One owner in particular expressed some annoyance at being made a poster child for right wing nonsense:

We were never interviewed for these articles and we did not close our … location due to the new minimum wage,” Kounpungchart and Frank said in an email. “We do not know what our colleagues are doing to prepare themselves for the onset of the new law, but pre-emptively closing a restaurant seven years before the full effect of the law takes place seems preposterous to us.”

Frank went so far as to send a note to the author of the Washington Policy Center post saying: “Our business model is conducive to the changing times and we would appreciate it if you did not make assumptions about our business to promote your political values.”

As a point of clarification, the absurdity of the original Seattle Magazine story becomes even more clear if we look at the implementation schedule. The minimum wage in Seattle is presently 9.47, up from 9.32 on January 1st (Washington has an annual inflation adjustment for the minimum wage). On April first the implementation of Seattle’s minimum wage begins, but for employers with under 500 the minimum compensation goes to 11.oo an hour, but the minimum wage for tipped employees only goes to 10.00. So it’s a 53 cent increase in most cases, and 1.53 in the case of non-tipped employees making bare minimum.

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