In the face of those who are seeking to rush a decision on raising the current minimum wage before the end of the year, the Northwest Chamber Alliance – the consortium including Boulder Counties’ largest chamber organizations representing approximately 3,700 businesses and non-profit organizations, along with their 380,000 employees – is resolute in its call to end their insensitive and reckless efforts. Instead, we encourage you to engage with us in a process that fully considers the impacts, both positive and negative, of a potential future minimum wage increase, works to deploy mitigation measures, and establishes mechanisms for understanding the consequences of such a policy action.
Between a pandemic shutdown, hyper-inflationary cost increases, surging property taxes, workforce challenges and supply chain struggles, the businesses and non-profits that serve our communities and employ our residents have demonstrated remarkable flexibility and resiliency. However, many are still teetering on the brink of failure. To blithely add significant additional cost to their bottom-line expenses and inject imbalanced cross-jurisdictional competition, completely disregards the findings from studies in other communities of the further negative business and employee impacts from ill-considered minimum wage increases.
The Northwest Chamber Alliance does not take this position without sensitivity to the high cost of living for our area workforce. Each of the organization’s member chambers stands ready to participate in a process that addresses the goals for a proposed minimum wage increase and other measures for reducing living expenses. Yet the very folks who a blanket minimum wage increase purports to help often are the ones who most suffer the consequences. That is why it takes careful and deliberate analysis – which fully accounts for the impacts on local businesses, non-profits and their employees – before taking such significant legislative action.
With that in mind, The Northwest Chamber Alliance asks for a respectful timeline to fully understand and address business and non-profit concerns, develop a regional consensus to ensure competitive consistency, and build a tool to assess the resulting impacts of any enacted minimum wage increase. This character of process would give our regional chambers the opportunity work alongside other community interests, including our too-often disenfranchised populations, in a transparent and inclusive manner to develop solutions to current cost of living challenges. It also offers our businesses and nonprofits the opportunity to make appropriate budgetary and programming adjustments within a standard annual time horizon.
This is not wholly a question of whether or not those who propose to raise our local minimum wage have the votes to take such an action. This is about a standard of policy analysis, transparency and stakeholder engagement that should be the hallmark of a community that respects all impacted parties, including your local businesses, non-profits and workforce. The Northwest Chamber Alliance hopes our elected leaders adhere to that tradition and avoid further reckless talk of a rushed decision.
Contacts:
Boulder Chamber of Commerce:
John Tayer – President and CEO
303-442-1058 / john.tayer@boulderchamber.com
Boulder County Latino Chamber of Commerce:
Carla Colin – Programs and Membership Manager
720-491-1986 / Carla@latinochamberco.org
Lafayette Chamber of Commerce
Vicki Trumbo – Executive Director
303-666-9555 / info@lafayettecolorado.com
Longmont Chamber of Commerce
Scott Cook – Chief Executive Officer
720-864-2872 / scook@longmontchamber.org
Louisville Chamber of Commerce
Eric Lund – Executive Director
303-666-5747 / eric@louisvillechamber.com
Superior Chamber of Commerce
Leslie Espinoza – Executive Director
303-554-0789 / leslie@superiorchamber.com
Click here for more information about the Northwest Chamber Alliance.