Effective Jan. 1, lawmakers in more than a dozen states raised minimum-wage rates, but North Carolina wasn’t one of them.
Since then, President Barack Obama has urged Congress to set the minimum wage rate at $10.10 in February. Obama has drawn criticism for his plan from state lawmakers, such as U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis, who said the federal government shouldn’t even set a minimum wage, according to The Charlotte Observer.
Despite this debate, a nonprofit has found that a majority of small business owners support Obama’s plan to increase the minimum wage.
The Small Business Majority, a nonprofit organization that aims to shed light on issues faced by small business owners, found using a recent poll conducted across the nation that about 57 percent of small business owners are in favor of raising the minimum wage to $10.10.
Small Business Majority has locations in eight states and works solely on small business issues and policy stances from polling, according to Allison Abney, the media relations manager for Small Business Majority.
The official findings were that 57 percent of surveyed small business owners support raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 in three stages during two and a half years to $10.10 and that it should be adjusted annually to keep pace with the cost of living, according to Abney.
Chris Poole, the owner of The Alley, a bowling alley on Hillsborough Street since 2009, said that while he did not have a strong preference in the matter, he personally has never paid any of his employees minimum wage, even before the recession.
Poole said he often hires college students that are working part-time jobs and that because he is 29, relatively young for a small business owner, he understands that times can be tough.
“I’ve always paid my employees more than that,” Poole said. “I’ve been in that world and I know what it’s like. It just takes more to survive these days.”
Poole said that if he were asked to vote he would probably vote to raise the wage to $10.10, even though he believes it would not affect him directly.
Findings have showed that 61 percent of retail and restaurant businesses voted yes, 50 percent of men voted yes, 68 percent of women said yes, and that of businesses that earn less than $100,000 a year, 59 percent voted yes, Abney said.
According to Abney, a professional polling company carried out the process of surveying small business owners for Small Business Majority.
Abney said the company had done a similar poll before that did not include a specific dollar amount to which the wage should be raised and that though this poll showed that a majority were in favor of the increase, it did not make them certain that the $10.10 poll would have the same outcome.
Abney said Small Business Majority does opinion polling in other areas, like tax policy, but that polling is only one component of what the organization does. Once the organization has collected data from polling, the group seeks to advocate for the majority opinion. The organization then works on outreach and education, Abney said.
The process of outreach and education involves informing small business owners about how different laws and regulations affect them, according to Abney.
Abney said that as a nonprofit organization, its goal is to advocate and reach out to lawmakers in both federal and state governments.
“Our overall goal is to make sure small businesses are heard by policy makers and by the media because small businesses provide half of private sector goods,” Abney said. “They are a large part of our economy and it’s important to meet their needs.”
