REPRESENTED
Think Out Loud is traveling to cities and towns across the state to hear about the policy issues that matter to Oregonians. How do the decisions of lawmakers in Salem affect our lives? See our full coverage here.
Ashley Bardales worked for more than 10 years at minimum wage. She's now living with her two young children at her father and step-mother's house in Forest Grove, and attending cosmetology school in Hillsboro.
John Rosman / OPB
John Zielinski is the manager and co-owner of E.Z. Orchards, a family business. He grown apples, pears, hazelnuts and peaches. He says a $15/hour minimum wage would force his fourth-generation business to change the crops that are grown and would put E.Z. Orchards at a competitive disadvantage nationally.
John Rosman / OPB
Mariel Mota works for the Rosewood Initiative, in a low-income area of SE Portland. She makes less than minimum wage now, since she's currently funded by an Americorp Vista grant. She supports a higher minimum wage, something closer to a "living wage."
Allison Frost / OPB
Emma Funk is a barista in a Forest Grove coffee shop. She says she makes ends meet just fine working at $10/hour, near Oregon's minimum wage. She says she lives within her means, has roommates and doesn't overspend. She says $15/hour sounds high, and thinks the federal minimum wage is a good standard.
John Rosman / OPB
Aaron Vongdeuane works part time at the Rosewood Initiative as the community events manager. He makes $10/hour and says he's only able to make that work because he's young and lives at home.
Allison Frost / OPB
Marci Pelletier is the owner of Schwop, a clothing exchange membership business in SE Portland. She'd like to see the minimum wage increase.
John Rosman / OPB
Nick Walker has been working at Phil's 1500 Subs in Forest Grove for five years. He makes $9.35 an hour and thinks it's appropriate. "I'm OK with my minimum wage here because really, I'm just making sandwiches," says Walker. He thinks $15/an hour is a little too much for him. Walker says he's been able to pay off a year of school at Western Oregon University and a car, all on a minimum wage. "It took a little while, but it's still doable."
John Rosman / OPB
Best friends, Christi Crandall (left) and Ginny Mettee. Both oppose any mandatory increase in the minimum wage. Crandall is a general contractor and says she thinks it would hurt the economy overall, since business would have to raise prices. Mettee runs a preschool and says it removes the incentive for people to get a better education in order to make more money. “There has to be a place to start somewhere,” she says.
John Rosman / OPB
Ashley Bardales has worked minimum wage jobs for 11 years. Mostly in food service, she says, but also customer service and at one point, at a retirement home. She says she's now attending cosmetology school so she can "get out of the minimum wage cycle."
"I've attempted higher education seven times. And I always have to stop," says Ashley, "because I can't work full-time to pay the bills at the same time of taking care of my two kids, at the same time of trying to get an education." Bardales is living with her dad and step-mom to make it all pencil out.
Mariel Mota works for the Rosewood Initiative, in a low-income area of SE Portland. She makes less than minimum wage now, since she's currently funded by an Americorp Vista grant. She supports a higher minimum wage, something closer to a "living wage."
Allison Frost / OPB
Mariel Mota, the community leadership development coordinator for the Rosewood Initiative, makes far less than minimum wage, since she works under a special AmeriCorp VISTA program. Mota says it's hard to make ends meet, but she's one of the lucky ones — later this year she'll be getting a regular salaried position with the Rosewood Initiative that will put her well above minimum wage.
The Rosewood Initiative usually has free bread, donated by the local bread company Dave's Killer Bread.
Allison Frost / OPB
The Rosewood Initiative, which launched a few years ago, has quickly become a center for community events and a resource for the low-income residents who live in the low-income area of East Portland — from donated bread to employment resources.
Rosewood's community center is in Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson's district. The Portland democrat is co-sponsoring a bill in the Oregon legislature that would raise the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour.
Jessica Vega Pederson
April Baer / Oregon Public Broadcasting
Vega Pederson says implementing a "living wage" for the state is good for workers, but they are not the only ones who will benefit. "We've seen national research that says there's actually a 95 percent positive impact for increasing the minimum wage to our economy," says Vega Pederson.
But that just doesn't resonate for small business owners like John Zielinski of E.Z. Orchards. His family business grows apples, pears, hazelnuts and peaches. He has 14 employees and they get between minimum wage and $14/hour. He says if the minimum wage suddenly went up, he'd probably have to change his business model.
“I don't have the ability to raise prices on the products I sell," Zielinski says. "What we grow is mostly shipped out of our state. We sell our pears to a cannery, and the price is set. I can't say, 'Oh, our minimum wage went up. I need to get more for my pears.' It doesn't work that way.”
If the minimum wage jumped to $15/hour, "we would have to seriously look long term if we would continue to grow pears," Zielinski says. "Maybe we'd grow a less labor intensive crop, such as hazelnuts. One or two men could farm 100 acres of hazelnuts. As opposed to, you know, a dozen men or more to grow a hundred acres of pears."
E.Z. Orchard's John Zielinski (left) with Peter Emerson of Bipartisan Cafe with "Think Out Loud" host Dave Miller.
Sage Van Wing / OPB
That kind of interstate commerce is one reason that Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson favors raising the minimum wage nationally. "The fact is that farm workers all across America are some of the lowest paid workers," she says. "There's no reason, in such a labor intensive job, that farm workers shouldn't be able to earn the same minimum wage as every other person that's working."
There are more than a dozen bills in the state legislature this year that would affect the minimum wage in various ways. The session is scheduled to go until early July.