OPINION: Ballot Measure 1 will make Alaska a better place to work and live

I have both worked for hourly wages and, for many years, operated restaurant businesses paying hourly wages. During college and around and about my service in the Army, including a tour in Vietnam, I worked as a roughneck on oil rigs throughout the West. After graduation in 1968, I roughnecked in California for the “high” wage of some $3.50 per hour before the new oil discovery in Prudhoe Bay enticed me to move to Alaska. There, I again found employment roughnecking on the North Slope for the even “higher” wages of about $4.50 per hour until I decided to try my hand at business.

I started up Grizzly Burger on the corner where C Street terminated at a two-lane Northern Lights Boulevard. Thus began more than two decades of hands-on involvement with the restaurant business from personally hiring and working with kids on their first jobs to managing and working with experienced cooks and servers. I always felt indebted to my employees for the hard work they did to please the customers and make the business successful.

In 1969, the year the first Grizzly Burger opened, and in 1975, when I started Downtown Deli, the minimum wage was $2.10 per hour. Today, it is only $11.73. Adjusted for inflation, an hourly wage of $2.10 in 1969 would be worth more than $17 in 2023.

Unable to get legislative or state administration support for increasing the minimum wage, residents throughout Alaska have successfully gathered the support necessary to put an initiative on the ballot to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next three years and to implement a paid sick leave program.

This isn’t the first time the Alaska public has taken the lead on improving pay rates; in 2014, its last minimum wage initiative was on the ballot because of the legislative and gubernatorial failure to act. The Alaska public responded with an overwhelming 69% positive vote. I believe voters will again overwhelmingly support Ballot Measure No. 1, based on the economic and social benefits it provides to the working families and businesses of Alaska.

Alaska’s current minimum wage of $11.73 per hour is around the median of all states’ wage rates. There are 22 states that have higher minimum wages, including Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Florida, Oregon and Washington. But then let’s compare wages to the cost of living of all states. Here, Alaska has the dubious distinction of ranking 6th highest overall for cost of living among its peers. Looking more deeply into this statistic, we find that Alaska ranks first in the cost of food and health care and third in terms of transportation costs.

So it is easy to see that the woeful combination of the high cost of living with median wage rates makes many Alaska families unable to make ends meet. And these economics are only exacerbated by the steady drumbeat of inflation over the last several decades. It puts pressure on people to move away from the state and out of the job market to more favorable locales. An unstable workforce, or shortage of workers, is not good for business.

This initiative also establishes paid sick leave for businesses, which makes economic sense and ensures fair living standards. Under the initiative, employees earn access to paid sick leave at the rate of one hour per every 30 hours worked, with a ceiling of 56 hours of paid sick leave (reduced to 40 hours for employers of fewer than 15 workers). Currently, 18 states have already realized the benefits of paid sick leave and passed laws implementing this policy.

It is widely accepted that employees who go to work when they are sick but can’t afford to lose their wages are not only hurting their own health but also risking the well-being of the rest of the workforce. This was brought home to us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses are not well served if there is an outbreak of disease that contaminates both their employees and their customers. Additionally, the use of sick leave days should be extended to enable a parent to provide care for a sick child, rather than sending the child to school or a daycare center that would endanger other kids as well as teachers.

Ballot Measure 1 will make Alaska a better place to work and live. It will benefit workers and businesses. It will improve Alaska’s economy by attracting and keeping a pool of healthy, equitably paid workers for our businesses.

Please join me and many other Alaskans in supporting this initiative.

Tony Knowles is a former Anchorage mayor and former Alaska governor. He has owned several restaurants throughout his career.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.