Maverick Costco CEO Joins Push to Raise Minimum Wage | Call 1-800-459-1887

Maverick Costco CEO Joins Push to Raise Minimum Wage
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 30, 2007; Page D04

The chief executive of Costco Wholesale, the nation's largest wholesale club, yesterday became the most prominent member of a new organization of business owners and executives pressing Congress to approve an increase in the federal minimum wage.

Jim Sinegal, a maverick entrepreneur who founded Costco in 1983 and has resisted Wall Street pressure to cut wages and benefits for his 130,000 employees, said he signed onto the effort because he thinks a higher minimum wage would be good for the nation's economy as well as its workers.

"The more people make, the better lives they're going to have and the better consumers they're going to be," Sinegal said in an interview. "It's going to provide better jobs and better wages."

That view opposes the position held by many business groups, which have lobbied against legislation moving through Congress to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15. Democrats have placed a high priority on increasing the minimum wage, which has fallen to its lowest level in more than 50 years when adjusted for inflation. The measure has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate, where Republicans have said they will support it only if tax breaks are included for small businesses.

(snip)

Sinegal is one of dozens of business owners and executives who don't buy that argument <<<that employers will be forced to cut jobs>>> and are lending their voices to an effort called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a project of Business for Shared Prosperity, an organization of "forward-thinking business owners, executives and investors committed to building enduring economic progress on a strong foundation of opportunity, equity and innovation," according to the organization's Web site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012901783.html