From State Rep. Allen Skillicorn:
Rep. Allen Skillicorn: Minimum Wage Increase will Lead to More Job Loss and More People Leaving Illinois
East Dundee, IL – State Rep. Allen Skillicorn (R-East Dundee) is warning Illinois residents about the high cost of the minimum wage increase the House just approved.
Allen Skillicorn
“I had the privilege of sitting in a great burger restaurant, and I was talking to the owner and she explained to me how she pays her cooks $18 per hour and if we increase the wages for dishwashers and other lower skilled positions then she is going to have to pay her cooks more,” Skillicorn said.
“It is not just about the entry level positions.
“Everyone’s salary will have to go up.”
She said the only way it can work will be to lay some people off and for her to do even more
work than she is doing now.
The consequences of this legislation will be felt across the state for a long time to come.”
The Illinois House today approved legislation (SB 1) to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour in six years.
“The price of goods and services in Illinois is going to go up and the cost to taxpayers is going to be enormous,” Skillicorn said.
“State government alone is looking at an increase of more than $1 billion in payroll costs.
“Where is the state going to get an extra $1 billion?
“We can hardly pay the bills we have now.
“We are only going to drive jobs away from Illinois and this will lead to Illinois losing even more people.”
House Bill 1 now moves to the Governor’s desk for his signature.
Completely lost in the discussion on the new minimum wage law has been the impact on governmental bodies, like school districts and park districts, that hire a large number of people below the $15/hour threshold.
Cary District 26 spent more than a year negotiating a contract with our support staff union that was carefully designed to blend wages and benefits over the next several years to meet the educational needs of our students on an affordable and sustainable basis.
The new minimum wage law completely wipes out this contract.
The District will have to operate with substantially higher than anticipated labor costs as the minimum rate ramps up every year until 2025.
The district will also absorb additional costs from its vendors that provide services such as janitorial, food service, special education services, 3rd party transportation, etc.
While businesses have options to offset the financial impact of the new minimum wage increase, such as increasing prices or outsourcing production or relocating to another state, a school district’s choices are very limited.
A school district can either raise property taxes, eliminate programs to reduce headcount or just run a deficit.
For a well run district, none of those options are palatable.
**Completely lost in the discussion on the new minimum wage law has been the impact on governmental bodies**
And, by “completely lost”, do you mean it was one of the main issues that was talked about over and over again in Springfield?
The State specifically ignored the impact on schools and other local governmental units.
Here’s a recent article describing the analysis out of the governor’s office that excludes any impact related to schools, etc.:
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/statewide-15-minimum-wage-passes-illinois-house-ready-for-pritzker/
The key takeaway: “Pritzker offered few details about the cost before the Senate vote, but a memo from the governor’s office obtained Feb. 5 by WCIA-TV included a forecast of the cost JUST for state workers’ wage increases: nearly $1.1 billion.
That estimate did not include the cost of local government workers’ wage increases, which municipalities are likely to pay for by hiking Illinois’ already-high property taxes.”
Performing an impact analysis on school districts would have required ISBE to request data from over 850+ districts.
And ISBE certainly wasn’t going to get involved in an effort to illuminate legislation that Pritzker campaigned on and was being jammed through the legislature at light speed.
ISBE was not going to try to hinder Pritzker given that their budget is entirely based on the largesse of JB/Madigan/Cullerton.