SEATTLE—The posters on display at the entrance to her Capitol Hill store say it all: “You are safe here.” “Black Lives Matter.” “Resist Trump: keep America great.”
“I was raised on the most progressive politics,” says Jon (pronounced “Joan”) Milazzo, who co-owns Retrofit Home, a furniture shop on a busy corner of downtown Seattle. A native Vermonter who moved west about 30 years ago, Ms. Milazzo is all for the idea that employees – especially those at the bottom of the pay scale – receive a fair wage for their work.
But she is straining to reconcile her principles with what’s best for her business. Seattle’s 2015 minimum wage ordinance raises hourly pay by 50 cents to a dollar per year until all companies in the city hit $15 by 2021. Milazzo says she’d be happy to comply – if she didn’t also have to contend with soaring property taxes and rental and utility rates. Instead, she’s condensed her store hours and cut entry-level jobs.
“You can’t just say to the little people, ‘Now pay everybody more,’ ” she says. “Where does it come from?”
Seattle, among the first cities to adopt a $15-an-hour minimum wage ordinance, has been the setting for a debate over the effects of the policy so far. The dispute centers on two apparently conflicting studies, both released this year. One, from the University of Washington, found that the ordinance significantly reduced average earnings for low-wage workers throughout the city because employment opportunities declined. Another, from the University of California, Berkeley, found that job loss – specifically in the food service industry – was minimal, and that wages indeed rose for workers making the least.
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