Following Amazon’s announcement that it was raising its starting pay rate to $15 an hour, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Congress should mandate the same for the entire country. But one of the few U.S. locales to actually embrace a $15 minimum wage — Flagstaff, Ariz. — is currently having second thoughts about the merits of the policy and might soon undo it.
The story starts in 2016, when labor groups from in-state and out-of-state (as far away as New York) helped finance Flagstaff’s Proposition 414 to raise the city’s minimum wage by 93 percent to $15.50 and to raise the base wage for tipped employees by more than 200 percent. The ballot measure passed, and the negative consequences followed almost immediately. Country Host West restaurant and Cultured frozen yogurt were two of the first victims; one business owner explained the reason for the closure: “It’s not that we didn’t want to pay our employees more. We just couldn’t afford to do it.”
