Michigan minimum wage will increase next year. Thank the Supreme Court, not Republicans.

In 2018, two citizen referendums aimed to improve conditions for low-wage workers by asking Michigan voters to raise the minimum wage, the tipped minimum wage and to require businesses to offer paid sick leave to workers. The organizers collected hundreds of thousands of signatures required to place the questions on the November general election ballot

Republicans — and, of course, the deep-pocketed Michigan Chamber of Commerce and other business groups — believed the ballot measures would pass by a wide margin. They were probably right. When it comes down to it, most folks agree that $9.25 an hour, roughly $19,000 a year, is just not enough. Repealing a law passed by voter referendum requires a three-fourths majority in both chambers of the Legislature; if voters had OK’d the measures, they would’ve been here to stay.

So in September 2018, GOP lawmakers, frantic to keep these questions off the November ballot, hastily created new legislation — the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act and the Earned Sick Time Act — that would implement both policy changes, meaning both referendums were halted.

Here's where it gets outrageous: After the general election, state Republicans gutted both policies, a practice dubbed "adopt and amend."

In an absolutely unapologetic move that circumvented the will of voters and subverted the democratic process, the Republican Legislature cut the number of paid sick hours employees could accrue in half, exempted businesses with fewer than 50 employees from offering paid sick leave altogether and slowed the pace of minimum wage increases to a crawl, moving the finish line from 2022 to 2030. Former Gov. Rick Snyder signed the amended policies into law.

The duplicity was breathtaking.

Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that "adopt and amend" is unconstitutional — obviously — and that the original intent of both policies must be restored. Starting in February, Michigan must phase in wage increases for minimum wage and tipped workers, who currently earn $9.87 and $3.75 an hour respectively, and workers at businesses with fewer than 50 employees will begin to accrue paid sick time.

The new wage scale, justices said, must account for inflation in the six years since the legislation passed, with minimum wage set at $10 an hour, increasing to $10.65 in 2025, plus an inflation adjustment, with tipped wages rising to 48% of the minimum wage, with the minimum wage and tipped rage reaching parity in 2029.

The sky is falling, again

The same Republicans who committed this legislative malpractice in the first place will now tell you that doom is around the corner: Small businesses will close in droves, laying off thousands of employees (instead of raising prices, or finding some other way to absorb the costs), workers and employers alike forced into poverty all because activists and profligate Democrats don't believe $19,000 a year is a reasonable wage. Jerks, right?

(It's worth noting that most, if not all, of the Republicans — all of whom enjoyed paid sick leave as members of the Legislature — who led the adopt-and-amend effort have been term limited out of office. In other words, they don't have to live with the consequences.)

I don't discount that despite our still pretty healthy economy — inflation is trending down, unemployment remains low and the economy has kept growing — any additional costs will pose a hardship for some small business owners.

But there's another way to look at this: How it affects people.

My best friend is a small business owner

I have a lot of respect for small business owners, what they are able to accomplish and how they shape our economy and our worlds. When you think about the unique character of a city or neighborhood, you think about local restaurants and distinctive boutique shopping, not regional or national chains.

In fact, my best friend is a small business owner: Liz Blondy, owner of the dog daycare Canine To Five, with locations in Midtown Detroit, Ferndale and Commerce Township.

Starting pay at Blondy's dog daycares exceeds the minimum wage, but she says the increase does mean she'll have to adjust pay upward, at some impact to the business, and raise the salaries of existing employees to keep pace with incoming workers. (She seemed surprised when I told her not all workplaces do that: "It's just the fair thing to do!")

As for sick leave, she already offers it — Blondy has more than 50 employees, and would have been affected by the 2018 law, anyway.

"As more and more small business owners try to be good citizens, I choose to offer paid sick time," she said. "I don't want to be the reason someone is going broke, when they're working their a — off for me."

But it's also a pragmatic choice, Blondy said: "If you're trying to attract and retain quality employees, you have to worry about what is common in the workplace. If you don't take care of them, they will not stay with you, and (you) won't deliver the product you promised your customers."

People first

Low-wage workers don't exclusively live in Democrat-represented urban areas. They also live in places like Dewitt and West Olive, Clarklake and Clare.

If Michigan Republicans believed that raising the minimum wage and offering employees paid sick leave were bad policy, they ought to have campaigned against the ballot measures, explaining to their constituents why they, not their employers, ought to absorb the loss of unexpected illness or the vagaries of tipping practices — not indulged in an underhanded undermining of democratic principles.

And those lawmakers ought, perhaps, to have thought about the people they serve.

Nancy Kaffer is editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.