[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 69 (Thursday, May 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5267-H5268]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DICKEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with the comments of 
the gentleman from Florida about the Medicare cuts being not cuts but 
just slowing of the growth. This is something that we are finding in 
our State of Arkansas, people are being deceived by ads being paid for 
by special interests, and I am glad that that is brought up.
  Mainly what I want to talk about today is the minimum wage. I am an 
employer, a restaurant owner, as well as a Member of Congress from 
Arkansas. All of those things are important in this discussion. But 
before I get into more of the specifics, I would like for us to direct 
our attention to something that we have not seemed to bring to center 
stage as much as we should. In the business world, in the marketplace, 
it is the consumer, the person who is buying the goods, who is the 
boss. We lose sight of that fact.
  Mr. Speaker, if the boss finds that he or she cannot afford the price 
of the goods, then the boss will go to somewhere else where they can 
find a better price. If in fact the boss cannot go where he or she can 
get good service, they will go somewhere else. So all the time that we 
are talking about raising the minimum wage, we are not considering the 
fact who is paying it.
  The consumer, the people who buy the goods are paying it. In my 
particular instance, it is the person who comes into restaurants, and 
no question I am biased in that viewpoint, but I want to share with 
this body some of the bases for my being opposed to the raise, to the 
rise in the minimum wage.
  Mr. Speaker, first of all, some people think that the cost that we 
have in restaurants, the only increase that we will have in the minimum 
wage debate is what we will pay in addition to the present wage that we 
give now or whatever the increase might be, but that is not true. 
Everything that we buy, the meat, the lettuce, the tomatoes, even the 
transportation, the paper goods, all of these things will have 
increased prices or at least the push up from increased prices.
  So, if I am going to sell a taco for 89 cents and I want to keep the 
same margins that I have had before, which I am

[[Page H5268]]

entitled to, I have to look at the boss and say, OK, can you afford two 
more pennies or 91 cents? When that boss says no, I am going to 
pay that, then what we have to do is reduce the number of employees, 
which then cuts down on the service. It either cuts down on the service 
or makes it more difficult for the other employees who are having to 
work without adequate coworkers.

  So the effect is that it pushes at the seams of those people who are 
in the penny business, like we are in the restaurant business. There 
are 16.7 percent of our employees in Arkansas who are on the minimum 
wage right now. Those are people who are getting their first-time jobs. 
Any employer will tell you that the first-time employees are good in 
one respect in that they have not been taught the wrong thing. The 
other respect is that they have to be taught.
  So there is a learning period that goes and we pay the minimum wage. 
During some period of time, depending on how alert the employees are or 
how determined they are, they really are not worth the $4.25 because 
you have to put so much into them. Then you get the $4.25 employee if 
they think that that is the ceiling, that is all they are going to get, 
the employer finds that as he, the employer, sends the employees out to 
greet the customers and care for them. If an employee stays on minimum 
wage too long, there is a staleness that occurs.
  I do not believe an employee should manage to stay more than 2 years 
on average on minimum wage. We hope that they will either grow through 
achievement and improvement in our own operation or they will go get 
another job and take a good recommendation with them. So the minimum 
wage is a limiting factor in some sense.
  If you go into a business or restaurant where their minimum wage 
employees have been there for 4 or 5 or 6 or 7, 10 years, you are going 
to find a place where the service is not as good as it should be. So 
there is a misconception that we employers want to pay the minimum wage 
and get a profit from it. That is not the case. We want people to be 
worth more and we want to gauge that by productivity, not by the 
decision of liberal politicians who come in and for their own benefits 
give a minimum wage which in effect is an unfunded mandate.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to mention one other thing, and that is that the 
people who are hurt the most by this inflationary push of expenses and 
cost were the people who are on minimum wage. For example, if my tacos 
have to go from 89 cents to 91 cents, those two extra pennies are going 
to have an inflationary effect. Those pennies will affect the minimum 
wage people to a greater extent. It is regressive to a greater extent 
than they would be for somebody else who is not on minimum wage. So the 
inflationary effect, not only will they lose some jobs because we will 
have to reduce the work force in order to meet the minimum wages, but 
there is also this factor that they are going to have to meet inflation 
at the most serious level.
  So what I have said I am going to do is file an amendment to say let 
the States decide. Eleven States now pay more than minimum wage, and I 
am going to prepare and file an amendment to ask that the States be 
allowed to decide what minimum wage they want.

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